REESE  LIBRARY 

in: 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


.          7 

/ 


Class  Not 


GEORGE    ELIOT 

ETC. 


LITERARY   STUDIES 

BY 

JOSEPH   JACOBS 


Shall  ive  say :  '  Let  the  ages  judge  the 
spirits  I'  Why,  we  are  the  beginning 
oj  the  ages.  GEORGE  ELIOT 


NEW  AND  ENLARGED  EDITION 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1896 


TO 

FREDERICK    RYLAND 

IN   MEMORY   OF   OLD   TIMES 
AT   CAMBRIDGE 


UNI 


PREFACE 

/  have  explained  in  the  Introduction  why  I  have 
thought  it  worth  while  to  reprint  these  feloges'  of 
four  of  the  chief  English  writers  who  died  in  the 
last  decade  and  to  add  certain  reviews  of  books  by  or 
about  them.  I  desire  here  to  emphasise  the  fact  that 
these  obituaries  were  in  every  case  written  within 
the  two  or  three  days  that  elapsed  between  the  death 
of  their  subjects  and  the  appearance  of  the  ensuing 
issue  of  the  e  Athenceum.'  I  have  nothing  to  say 
against  the  practice  of  others,  but  I  cannot  myself 
anticipate  the  Great  Destroyer. 

I  have  to  thank  the  Publisher  and  Editor  of  the 
'  Athenaum '  for  their  kind  and  ready  permission  to 
reprint  these  articles  from  its  pages.  j  j 

P.S.— To  the  present  re-issue  I  have  added  articles 
on  Tennyson,  Stevenson,  and  Seeley,  which  appeared 
immediately  after  their  death.  I  have  to  thank  the 
Editors  of  the  Academy  and  Athenaeum  for  per- 
mission to  reproduce  these. 


CF  THE 

E 


,•*-  * 
0HIVERSn 


:': 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION xi 

GEORGE   ELIOT 

Necrologe  (ist  Jan.  1881)         ...  3 

'  Theophrastus  Such  '  (jth  June  1879)  .          17 

'  Essays' (z$d Feb.  -L%&4)         .  .  .31 

Cross's  'Life'  (31^  Jan.,  ?tk  Feb.  1885)        .          49 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

Necrologe  (v\st  April  1888)    ...          77 
1  Discourses  in  America  '  (27 1 'A  June  1885)    .          87 

BROWNING 

Necrologe  (zist  Dec.  1889)      ...         97 

NEWMAN 

Necrologe  (\&th  Aug.  1890)    .  .  .119 

Huttoris  'Newman'  (i8fti  Oct.  1890)  .        130 

Letters,  etc.  (ztfh  Jan.  iSigi)  .  .  .137 


x  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

TENNYSON 

Necrologe  (Academy,  is/A  Oct.  1892)  155 

STEVENSON 

Necrologe  (zznd  Dec.  1894)   .  .  .          *75 

SEELEY 

Necrologe  (izth  fan.  1895)     .  .          189 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  first  few  days  after  a  great  writer's  death 
are  critical  for  his  reputation.  Then  for  the  first 
time  we  realise  all  that  he  has  been  to  us,  all  that 
he  has  done  for  us.  We  can  for  the  first  time 
speak  of  his  whole  work  with  little  fear  of  the 
surprises  that  genius  has  often  in  store  for  the 
critic  who  dares  to  be  prophetic.  We  can  speak 
out  our  full  thought  of  him,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
because  what  we  say  cannot  by  any  chance  come 
before  him.  Above  all,  he  has  ceased  to  be  a 
person,  and  we  can  treat  more  simply  and  directly 
of  his  spiritual  influence.  At  the  same  time  we 
that  speak  are  those  who  have  come  under  his 
spell  in  his  lifetime  and  express  the  feelings  of  his 
contemporaries  without  any  of  the  disturbing 
influences  which  later  revelations  or  the  modifica- 
tion of  the  Zeitgeist  produce  on  the  appeal  he  may 
have  for  after-times.  We  alone  can  say  what  he 
has  been  to  us  whom  he  addressed. 

It  has  chanced  during  the  past  ten  years  that  I 
have  been  called  upon  to  give  on  behalf  of  the 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

Athenaeum  an  estimate  of  the  loss  English  Letters 
have  sustained  by  the  death  of  the  four  chief 
writers  who  left  us  during  the  decade.  These 
essays  differed,  I  believe,  in  at  least  two  respects 
from  the  obituary  notices  which  swarm  from  the 
press  on  such  occasions.  They  were  estimates, 
not  obituaries;  they  dealt  rather  with  the  work 
than  with  the  life  of  each  author.  And  they  were 
written  immediately  on  hearing  of  the  death  of  the 
writer  concerned,  whereas  it  is  well  known  that 
every  newspaper  has  obituaries  of  all  the  nota- 
bilities of  the  time  pigeon-holed  for  production  on 
the  morrow  of  the  death.  Whatever  then  the 
merits  of  these  essays,  they  were  written  under  the 
influence  of  the  feelings  I  have  indicated  above, 
and  were  in  each  case,  I  may  perhaps  say,  the 
first  critical  estimate  of  contemporary  England  on 
the  lifework  of  these  great  writers.  That  they 
appeared  in  the  foremost  literary  journal  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples  gives  them  an  impor- 
tance that  I  could  not  claim  for  any  personal  utter- 
ances. I  have  for  these  reasons  thought  them 
worthy  of  being  put  in  more  permanent  form  as 
documents — f documents'  is  a  favourite  word  and 
thing  just  now — in  the  history  of  English  opinion 
about  the  writers  treated  in  this  volume.  At  the 
same  time  I  have  thought  it  right  to  leave  them  in 
substantially  the  same  form  as  that  in  which  they 
first  appeared,  only  removing  a  few  traces  of  neces- 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

sarily  hasty  writing.  ' Documents'  must  not  be 
falsified.  I  may  perhaps  venture  to  add,  in  fairness 
to  myself,  that  there  are  some  few  things  in  them 
which  I  would  have  put  differently  if  I  had  been 
writing  over  my  own  name  in  the  first  instance. 

To  make  this  little  volume  more  worthy  ot 
acceptance,  I  have  added  a  few  reviews  of  works 
written  by  or  about  the  authors  treated.  These 
also  appeared  in  the  Athenceum  for  the  most  part 
after  the  death  of  the  subjects  of  my  eloges.  They 
were  more  detailed  estimates  of  parts  of  the  authors' 
works,  or  they  dealt  more  at  large  with  their  lives, 
or  in  other  ways  they  seemed  to  me  to  supplement 
the  more  general  eloges  written  for  a  special  occasion 
from  a  special  point  of  view. 

Looking  back  on  these  memorial  essays,  I  can 
now  discern  the  general  method  on  which  they 
were  formed,  though  I  was  not  conscious  of  it  at 
the  time  of  writing.  At  the  moment  of  an  author's 
death,  we  think  primarily  of  the  man  we  have  lost. 
But  we  mourn  the  man  for  the  sake  of  his  works, 
hence  it  is  those  of  his  qualities  that  are  shown  in 
his  works  which  naturally  engage  our  attention  at 
the  moment  of  his  death.  These  essays  are  there- 
fore appropriately  devoted  to  the  literary  qualities 
of  their  subjects'  minds.  They  are  of  the  psycho- 
logical, not  of  the  aesthetic  order  of  criticism. 

'  There  are,'  to  quote  myself  elsewhere,  ftwo 
'  methods  of  studying  literary  productions,  which 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

'  may  be  roughly  described  as  the  aesthetic  and 
f  the  psychological.  The  former  goes  straight  to 
*  the  literary  products  themselves,  and  seeks  to 
'  determine  their  aptitude  for  exerting  the  specific 
t  literary  emotions  often  reflecting  the  critic's  own 
'  feelings  in  the  rhythm  and  beauty  of  his  language. 
s  This  is  the  method  of  Lamb  and  Mr.  Swinburne, 
'  and  (in  his  best  moments)  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold. 
e  The  other  or  psychological  method  looks  rather 
'  to  the  literary  producer,  and  endeavours  to  ascer- 
'  tain  those  qualities  of  the  author's  mind  that 
'  would  produce  such  and  such  results.  Mr.  Leslie 
'  Stephen  pursued  this  method  during  his  Hours 
e  in  a  Library,  and  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Hutton 
f  afford  other  instances  of  its  use.'  I  need  scarcely 
say  to  which  of  these  two  methods  the  present 
essays  belong.  By  natural  bent,  by  training — I 
have  some  claims  to  be  an  expert  in  psychology — I 
belong  to  the  psychological  school.  To  be  of  the 
aesthetic  school  is  only  given  to  those  who  are 
something  more  than  critics.  They  are  the  artists 
in  criticism ;  nous  autres  must  be  content  with 
being  scientific,  though  even  we  may  attempt  to 
give  such  artistic  form  to  our  work  as  science 
allows.  Each  school  has  its  province.  I  have 
tried  to  show  above  that  the  psychological  method 
has  a  fit  application  at  moments  when  we  are 
thinking  of  the  literary  qualities  of  an  author's 
mind  rather  than  the  literary  effect  of  his  works. 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

In  making  my  estimates  of  George  Eliot, 
Matthew  Arnold,  Browning,  and  Newman,  I  have 
had  the  critical  advantage,  though  the  personal 
loss,  of  not  being  personally  acquainted  with  the 
subjects  of  my  essays  except  in  one  case.  Of 
George  Eliot  I  may  say  at  least  vidi  tantum.  I  can 
still  recall  the  feelings  of  ardent  reverence  with 
which  I  approached  the  Priory,  North  Bank,  one 
Sunday  afternoon  in  1877.  I  had  written  an 
enthusiastic — I  fear  I  must  add  gushing — defence 
of  Daniel  Deronda,  from  a  Jewish  point  of  view, 
in  the  June  number  of  Macmillans  Magazine  of 
that  year,  and  George  Henry  Lewes  had  expressed 
a  wish  that  I  should  call  upon  them.  I  went  with 
all  the  feelings  of  the  neophyte  at  the  shrine  for 
the  first  time.  Need  I  say  that  I  was  disap- 
pointed? Authors  give  of  their  best  in  their 
works  under  the  consciousness  of  addressing  the 
whole  world.  We  ought  not  to  expect  them  to 
live  up  to  that  best  at  all  times  and  before  all 
onlookers  :  but  we  do. 

I  have  few  Boswellisms  to  offer.  I  remember 
being  struck  even  at  that  early  stage  of  my  social 
discernment  by  the  contrast  between  the  boisterous 
Bohemian  bonhomie  of  George  Lewes  and  the  almost 
old-maidenish  refinement  of  his  life's  companion. 
I  had  tried  to  lead  her  talk  to  my  own  criticism,  but 
was  met  by  the  quiet  parry,  f  I  never  read  criticisms 
of  my  own  works/  I  could  not  help  thinking  at 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

the  time  '  quefais-je  done  dans  cette  galere  ? '  but  she 
was  obviously  in  the  right.  Others  were  present 
and  the  topics  had  to  be  general.  We  got  upon 
songs  for  singing,  and  I  was  attempting  to  con- 
tend that  the  sweetest  songs  for  vocal  purposes 
were  nowadays  not  those  of  the  poets  of  the  day. 
She  pointed  out  that  even  Tennyson's  in  the 
Princess  were  unsuitable  for  that  purpose,  whereas 
the  Elizabethans  produced  songs  that  were  gems  of 
literary  art,  yet  trilled  forth  as  naturally  as  a  bird's 
carol. 

I  saw  her  but  once  more  after  Lewes's  death.  I 
had  sent  her  something  I  had  published  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  and  she  had  written  asking  me 
to  call.  I  did  so,  and  found  the  house  in  gloom 
and  herself  in  depression.  On  this  occasion  I  was 
struck  by  the  massiveness  of  the  head  as  contrasted 
with  the  frailty  of  the  body.  When  she  was 
seated  one  thought  her  tall :  such  a  head  should 
have  been  propped  up  by  a  larger  frame.  The 
long  thin  sensitive  hands  were  those  of  a  musician. 
The  exquisite  modulations  of  the  voice  told  of 
refinement  in  every  well-chosen  phrase.  She  had 
at  least  one  of  the  qualifications  one  expects  in 
an  author ;  she  did  indeed  ftalk  like  a  book/  She 
spoke  of  one  of  her  favourite  themes,  the  appeal  of 
the  circle  in  which  one  is  born  even  if  one  has  in 
certain  ways  grown  beyond  or  outside  it.  Before  I 
left  she  asked  me  to  find  out  for  her  the  meaning 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

of  a  Hebrew  inscription  on  a  seal  which  an  old 
Russian  Jew  had  given  Tourgenief :  he  had  sent 
her  an  impression,  which  she  intrusted  to  me. 
1  You  will  be  careful  of  it,'  she  said,  '  I  prize  it  as 
coming  from  him/  I  thought  of  old  Kalonymos 
and  his  similar  caution  as  he  hands  the  key  of  his 
family  archives  to  Daniel  Deronda.  We  parted, 
and  I  soon  returned  the  impression  with  an  explan- 
ation of  the  inscription.  She  sent  a  few  words 
of  kindly  thanks,  and  that  was  all  till  I  received 
the  final  summons  to  Highgate  Cemetery. 

I  do  not  think  that  my  critical  estimate  of 
George  Eliot's  work  was  at  all  affected  by  this 
slight  personal  intercourse  with  her.  My  venera- 
tion for  her  work  in  those  days  may  have  led  me 
to  some  extent,  however,  to  that  curious  kind  of 
injustice,  when  we  guard  against  too  high  praise 
of  those  we  know  or  like  just  because  we  know  and 
like  them.  My  personal  estimate  of  her  work  when 
I  wrote  about  it  was  certainly  higher  than  my  writ- 
ten words  would  imply.  Judged  by  the  result  I 
was  justified  in  this  critical  caution.  In  the  ten 
years  or  so  that  have  elapsed  since  her  death,  George 
Eliot's  reputation  has  not  risen,  her  influence  has 
been  on  the  decline.  It  seems  worth  while  seek- 
ing for  the  causes  of  this. 

It  is  of  course  a  general  law  that  literary  reputa- 
tions do  decline  for  a  time  at  least  after  an 
author's  death.  While  he  lives  there  is  always  the 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

halo  and  attraction  of  the  unknown  about  what 
may  still  come  from  him  :  this  fades  away  with  his 
death.  Then  again  his  friends  have  no  longer  the 
same  motives  for  keeping  his  reputation  at  the 
highest  pitch.  Friends,  too,  die  away.  London 
again  is  the  fount  of  literary  reputation,  and 
Londoners,  like  all  inhabitants  of  great  cities,  are 
always  eager  for  some  new  thing.  Old  writers 
compete  with  the  new  ones,  it  is  true,  but  the 
competition  of  the  novelty  is  still  more  efficacious. 

All  these  causes  have  co-operated  to  lessen 
George  Eliot's  influence  and  reputation.  But 
there  are  other  more  special  causes  that  have 
tended  in  the  same  direction.  Mr.  Cross's  Life  was 
a  disappointment:  his  extreme  reticence  about 
personal  details  and  careful  excision  of  all  human- 
ising touches  made  the  book  dull,  and  the  total 
impression  of  George  Eliot's  personality  unattrac- 
tive. Her  last  books,  Daniel  Deronda,  Theophrastus 
Such,  and  the  collected  Essays,  were  a  progressive 
series  of  anti-climaxes,  and  it  is  the  latest  works 
that  give  the  final  impression  in  more  senses  than 
one.  Their  didactic  tone  was  too  obvious,  and  the 
British  public  resents  nothing  more  than  being 
preached  at  too  obviously. 

But  above  and  beyond  all  these  reasons  there 
has  been  a  subtle  and  gradual  change  in  the  public 
mind  which  has  told  against  George  Eliot's  work 
in  two  directions.  There  is  a  fashion  in  the  art  of 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

the  novel,  as  in  other  arts,  and  for  some  time 
the  vogue  has  been  growing  for  the  conte  as 
against  the  novel,  and  for  the  romantic  novel  of 
incident  as  against  the  realistic  novel  of  character. 
Amid  the  problems  and  perplexities  of  the  present 
we  fly  for  relaxation  to  the  Something-other-than- 
Here-and-Now,  and  we  like  to  take  it  short.  Both 
tendencies  tell  against  George  Eliot.  There  is 
a  general  tendency  nowadays  against  taking  intel- 
lectual nourishment  in  anything  but  small  doses. 
The  enormous  growth  of  the  magazines  is  at  once 
a  result  and  a  cause  of  this.  Tit-Bits  completes 
what  the  Fortnightly  Review  began.  It  is  indeed 
an  Age  of  Tit-bits.  The  strenuous  attention  which 
the  works  of  George  Eliot  demand  is  too  much  for 
minds  accustomed  to  such  intellectual  food  as  the 
magazines  now  supply.  The  high  seriousness  of 
her  art  displeases  the  frivolous,  and  the  tone  of 
English  Letters  just  now  is  distinctly  frivolous. 

George  Eliot  aimed  and  claimed  to  be  a  teacher. 
Her  works  were  a  conscious  criticism  of  life. 
They  gave  the  new  feeling  about  life  that  seemed  to 
be  rendered  necessary  by  the  triumph  of  Darwin- 
ism in  English  speculation.  During  the  '  seventies ' 
there  was  a  confident  feeling,  among  those  of  us 
who  came  to  our  intellectual  majority  in  those 
years,  that  Darwinism  was  to  solve  all  the  pro- 
blems. This  was  doubtless  due  to  the  triumph- 
ant tone  in  which  certain  eminent  professors  of 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

science — notably  Professors  Huxley,  Tyndall,  and 
Clifford— spoke  of  what  science  was  going  to  do  for 
the  spiritual  life  when  the  older  theological 
trammels  had  been  removed.  What  they  promised 
George  Eliot  was  currently  supposed  to  have 
attained,  and  her  words  were  scanned  for  the  secret 
message.  She  was  to  all  of  us  what  she  seemed  to 
Mr.  F.  W.  Myers  in  that  fine  description  of  his 
interview  with  her  in  the  Fellows'  Garden  at 
Trinity;  she  was  'a  Sibyl  in  the  gloom/  She 
alone,  we  thought,  possessed  the  message  of  the 
New  Spirit  that  Darwinism  was  to  breathe  into  the 
inner  life  of  man. 

Well,  Darwinism  has  come,  and  has  conquered, 
and,  as  a  vital  influence  in  the  spiritual  life,  has 
gone.  Instead  of  solving  all  the  problems,  it  has 
raised  only  too  many  fresh  ones.  It  has  thrown 
light  on  origins,  or  to  speak  more  accurately, 
it  has  set  us  on  the  search  for  origins.  But  the 
undeveloped  germ  which  we  call  origin  has  in  it 
ex  hypothesi  all  the  problems  which  the  developed 
product  offers,  and  presents  these  in  more  concen- 
trated form.  And  the  something  that  develops 
is  obviously  different  from  its  own  development, 
which  is  all  that  Darwinism  even  professes  to 
explain.  To  put  it  technically,  origins  are  not 
essences,  and  it  is  the  essence  of  the  matter,  the 
thing  as  in  itself  it  really  is,  that  we  seek  for. 
Hence  Darwinism,  which  merely  touches  origins  and 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

leaves  essences  alone,  only  disappoints.  The  pretty 
quarrel,  too,  that  is  going  on  among  the  experts 
about  the  fundamentals  of  Darwinism  has  helped 
to  discredit  it.  And  with  this  discredit  George 
Eliot,  the  literary  voice  of  Darwinism,  suffers  too. 
The  danger  which  I  foresaw  in  1879 — fthe  risk 
of  subordinating  the  eternal  truths  of  art  to  what 
may  be  the  temporary  opinions  of  science* — has 
proved  to  be  no  illusory  one. 

Again  our  interests  have  turned  from  speculation, 
even  from  the  bases  of  conduct,  and  are  almost 
exclusively  social.  '  We  are  all  socialists  now ' — 
since  the  Redistribution  Act — and  George  Eliot  has 
little  to  say  on  the  Condition  of  England  Question. 
And  what  little  she  does  say,  in  Felix  Holt  for 
example,  is  not  much  in  consonance  with  the  feel- 
ing of  to-day.  Her  dearest  memories  were  of  a 
time  when  old  Leisure  was  still  alive  and  social 
changes  took  place  but  slowly.  Felix  Holt  the 
Radical  is  rather  Felix  Holt  the  Conservative ;  he 
is  not  even  a  Tory-Democrat.  But  the  ineffective- 
ness of  her  social  utterances  was  a  sign  that  her 
heart  was  not  in  the  social  part  of  her  work ;  we 
have  no  heart  for  anything  else. 

For  all  these  reasons  then  the  reputation  of 
George  Eliot  is  undergoing  a  kind  of  eclipse  in 
this  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is 
becoming  safe  to  indulge  in  cheap  sneers  at  the 
ineffectiveness  of  her  heroes,  at  the  want  of  elan  in 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

the  movement  of  her  stories,  at  the  too  obvious 
preachments  of  her  rather  overspun  comments. 
Her  heroes  are  perhaps  rather  apt  to  be  muffs  ;  it 
is  the  way  with  heroes  of  novels  generally.  Her 
plots  might  develop  at  greater  speed ;  your  novel 
of  character  rarely  travels  express.  'Here  the 
story  halts  a  little '  might  be  written  over  many  a 
page  of  Richardson  and  Fielding,  of  Miss  Austen 
and  Thackeray,  but  it  is  a  part  of  their  method  and 
a  necessary  part.  And  the  comments  and  discussion 
which  cause  these  frequent  halts,  have  they  not 
a  special  appeal  of  their  own,  even  if  the  appeal 
be  somewhat  alien  to  the  art  of  the  novel  ?  And 
if  George  Eliot  preaches,  what  admirable  sermons 
she  writes  !  The  realistic  writer  cannot  describe 
the  life  around  him  or  her  without  indicating  the 
attitude  they  take  towards  it.  That  very  attitude 
is  a  preachment:  Zola  in  L'Assommoir,  Flaubert 
in  Madame  Bovary,  are  as  powerful  sermons  as  I 
know. 

That  part  then  of  George  Eliot's  work  which  ap- 
pealed more  especially  to  the  Zeitgeist  is  ineffective 
now  that  the  Zeitgeist  has  changed.  But  how 
much  remains  that  can  never  lose  its  effectiveness 
because  it  appeals  to  the  ewige  Geist  of  humanity. 
Her  admirable  peasants  and  parsons,  her  charming 
children,  her  scenery  and  her  interiors,  her  wit 
and  her  wisdom,  these  are  surely  a  possession  for 
aye  in  the  realm  of  English  fiction.  Whatever 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

view  we  take  of  her  art,  we  must  recognise  that  she 
has  added  as  many  living  personalities  to  the  com- 
mon acquaintance  of  English-speaking  people  as 
almost  any  other  English  novelist,  and  this  after 
all  is  the  final  criterion.  And  in  the  difficult 
sphere  of  the  aphorism,  her  works  are  more 
copiously  studded  with  suhtle  truths  aptly  ex- 
pressed than  those  of  any  novelist  who  has  ever 
written  in  English.  The  enemy  will  say  this  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  novel :  but  the  enemy  can 
always  complain  of  any  form  of  art  that  it  is  not 
another,  so  we  may  let  him  sneer. 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  devoting  some  atten- 
tion to  the  after-history  of  George  Eliot's  reputa- 
tion, as  so  much  of  this  volume  happens  already  to 
be  taken  up  by  a  consideration  of  George  Eliot's 
art  from  various  points  of  view,  and  I  have  here 
attempted  to  complete  the  survey.  With  the  other 
authors  considered,  there  is  no  occasion  to  deal 
in  such  detail,  as  their  loss  is  so  recent  that  any 
attempt  to  distinguish  the  permanent  elements  of 
their  art  would  be  impracticable. 

I  may  add  that  I  have  found  a  difficulty  in  giving 
an  appropriate  name  to  these  studies,  so  far  as  they 
are  not  reviews.  ( Obituaries '  of  the  authors  they 
are  not,  for  I  do  not  profess  to  give  any  details  of 
their  lives,  or  even  of  their  works.  ( Necrologe ' 
does  not  sound  English,  and  besides  savours  of 
Woking.  jfiloge  comes  nearest,  but  that  on  the 


^^jTese  LIBRA. 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

face  of  it  is  not  English.  A  wicked  wag  among 
my  friends  suggests  Post  Mortems,  but  I  trust  I 
have  not  been  quite  so  cruel  as  that  would  imply. 

One  more  word  and  I  have  done.  There  seems 
something  of  ingratitude,  almost  of  irreverence,  in 
subjecting  to  cool  criticism  writers  to  whom  one 
owes  so  much  of  one's  best  self.  I  need  not  refute 
the  fallacy,  that  in  presuming  to  criticise  one 
assumes  any  superiority :  if  that  were  so,  there 
would  scarcely  be  any  place  for  criticism,  and 
certainly  none  at  all  for  critics  pur  sang.  The 
author  appeals  to  his  generation :  the  critic  answers 
the  appeal.  In  the  present  case  the  thing  had 
to  be  done  and  I  was  called  upon  to  do  it.  I  can 
only  say  I  tried  to  do  my  work  as  honestly  and 
conscientiously  as  was  in  my  power. 


GEORGE    ELIOT 

December  22, 1880 


IVEHS 


GEORGE    ELIOT 

EVENTEEN  years  ago  the  Christ- 
mas week  was  darkened  by  the 
death  of  Thackeray.  Once  again 
the  festive  season  has  been  sad- 
dened in  many  a  household  by 
the  knowledge  that  George  Eliot  was  no 
more.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  with 
many  her  works  have  been  far  more  than 
novels ;  they  have  formed  an  animating  prin- 
ciple co-operating  with  some  of  the  most 
powerful  spiritual  influences  of  the  time.  It 
appears,  therefore,  to  be  an  appropriate 
occasion  to  pass  in  critical  review  the  works 
she  has  left  behind  her  and  to  estimate  their 
importance. 

As  is  well  known,  her  earlier  productions 
were  translations  of  German  works  on  the 
metaphysics  of  religion.  Strauss's  Life  of 
Jesus  appeared  in  an  English  form  in  1846, 
and  Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Christianity  in 
1853.  As  translations  they  were  excellent, 
but  it  cannot  be  said  that  they  have  had  any 


4  GEORGE  ELIOT 

influence  on  English  speculation.  Their  chief 
interest  consists  in  the  evidence  they  give  of 
George  Eliot's  early  devotion  to  c  advanced ' 
thinking  and  absorbing  interest  in  the  philo- 
sophy of  religion. 

Her  importance  in  the  history  of  English 
literature  rests  upon  the  series  of  fictions 
commenced  in  1857  with  the  Scenes  of  Clerical 
Life,  and  concluded  in  1876  by  Daniel 
Deronda.  It  is  not  difficult  to  discern  in 
these  works  two  widely  varying  sets  of  artistic 
motives.  The  Scenes,  Adam  Bede  (1859), 
The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  Silas  Marner,  Felix  Holt, 
and  Middlemarch  are  all  clearly  connected  by 
their  subject-matter,  and,  in  large  measure,  by 
their  style  of  treatment.  In  them  she  went 
back  to  the  scenes  and  days  of  her  child- 
hood. It  has  been  often  remarked  that  the 
plastic  period  of  the  literary  artist,  when 
impressions  are  retained  with  that  minute 
observation  necessary  for  the  novel,  ceases  at 
an  extremely  early  age.  Dickens  was  only  at 
home  in  the  England  of  coaches  and  among 
the  lower  classes.  George  Eliot  was  most 
happy  when  recalling  mid-England  in  the 
days  before  the  Reform  Bill.  Her  father  was 
a  land  surveyor,  and  she  thus  came  in  contact 
with  all  classes  of  provincial  society,  so  that 
her  pictures  are  far  more  complete  than  either 
Dickens's  or  Thackeray's  accounts  of  London 


GEORGE  ELIOT  5 

life.  Both  George  Eliot  and  George  Sand 
had  learned  that  provincial  life  is  more 
intense,  if  more  monotonous  and  simple,  than 
the  busy  life  of  towns.  Amid  the  turmoil  of 
cities,  existence  passes  through  a  series  of 
shallows,  as  it  were  ;  whereas  in  the  country 
the  emotions  are  collected  into  one  deep 
pool,  which  pours  forth  tumultuously  if  once 
disturbed.  Throughout  these  novels  of 
memory,  as  they  may  be  termed,  the  inci- 
dents and  tone  have  a  tragic  ring  about 
them  which  is  wanting  in  the  majority  of 
novels  dealing  with  London  life.  Only  in 
the  Brontes,  and  perhaps  in  Mrs.  Gaskell,  do 
we  find  anything  like  the  depth  of  earnest- 
ness displayed  in  these  novels  of  George 
Eliot.  Much  of  their  piquancy  depends  on 
the  contrast  between  the  subject-matter  and 
the  manifold  reflections  to  which  it  gives  rise. 
While  the  subject  is  entirely  obsolete,  the  re- 
flections are  in  accord  with  the  most  advanced 
thought  of  the  day.  Every  one  knows  some- 
thing of  the  scenery  and  the  characters  amid 
which  these  novels  are  placed.  The  rich 
fields  of  Loamshire  and  their  owners  and 
cultivators  in  the  early  years  of  this  cen- 
tury form  the  common  background  of  these 
tragedies  of  human  life.  Generally  speaking, 
they  treat  of  the  influence  of  adverse  cir- 
cumstance on  the  inner  life  of  the  actors. 


6  GEORGE  ELIOT 

It  is  essentially  the  spiritual  life  of  her  heroep 
and  heroines  which  interests  the  writer.  It 
is  characteristic  that  she  has  introduced  the 
religious  life  as  a  leading  motive  of  the  novel. 
Dinah  Morris's  spiritual  experiences  and  ex- 
hortations, Maggie  Tulliver's  conversion  by 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  even  Mr.  Bulstrode's 
wrestlings  of  the  spirit,  are  themes  which 
only  the  deepest  spiritual  sympathy  could 
have  handled  adequately.  Not  that  she  is 
deficient  in  the  lighter  qualities  of  the 
novelist's  art.  No  one  has  described  English 
scenery  with  more  accurate  touch  or  displayed 
a  more  Shakespearean  sense  of  humour.  Mrs. 
Poyser  and  Bartle  Massey  are  unequalled 
creations.  In  the  delineation  of  children's 
character  she  stands  almost  on  a  level  with 
Victor  Hugo.  Altogether,  in  range  of  sym- 
pathy, in  nobility  of  tone,  in  fertility  of 
reflection,  and  in  subtlety  of  insight  these 
novels  of  memory  are  unique  in  the  history 
of  fiction.  Opinion  will  differ  as  to  their 
comparative  merits,  and  each  has  its  distinc- 
tive qualities.  Yet  it  is  probable  that  Adam 
Bede  will  always  retain  a  certain  supremacy ; 
there  is  a  freshness  of  tone  as  if  the  writer 
were  luxuriating  in  new-found  powers.  The 
unsavoury  motif  of  Felix  Holt  places  it  out  of 
competition ;  Silas  Marner,  finished  as  it  is,  is 
on  a  smaller  scale ;  and  the  concluding  part 


GEORGE  ELIOT  7 

of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  destroys  the  almost 
perfect  'artistry*  of  the  story  of  Tom  and 
Maggie  Tulliver.  Middlemarch  remains,  and 
as  '  a  study  in  provincial  life '  is  complete ;  yet 
the  deficiencies  in  the  plot  and  a  certain 
undercurrent  of  social  protest  counterbalance 
its  other  advantages.,  and  the  palm  is  left  to 
George  Eliot's  first  and  probably  greatest 
work.  The  subject  of  Adam  Bede  required 
extreme  delicacy  of  treatment;  but  all  such 
requirements  are  satisfied.  The  shallowness 
of  Hetty's  character  removes  from  her  that 
sympathy  which  would  otherwise  render  her 
fate  too  sad  for  the  imagination ;  but  her 
history  illustrates  the  lesson  which  all  these 
novels  were  consciously  made  to  teach.  They 
aided  the  great  work  of  Wordsworth  in 
educating  the  emotions  to  sympathise  with 
the  fundamental  joys  and  sorrows  of  human 
life  in  all  social  spheres.  And  in  the  fine 
words  of  Wordsworth  about  his  own  works, 
fThey  will  co-operate  with  the  benign  ten- 
'  dencies  in  nature  and  society,  and  will,  in 
'  their  degree,  be  efficacious  in  making  men 
<  wiser,  better,  and  happier.' 

The  remaining  novels,  Romola,  The  Spanish 
Gypsy  (apart  from  its  unfortunate  form),  and 
Daniel  Deronda,  deal  with  an  entirely  different 
range  of  interests.  They  are  romances  of  the 
historic  imagination,  consciously  creative  in- 


8  GEORGE  ELIOT 

stead  of  being,  as  in  the  other  novels,  un- 
consciously reproductive.  The  first  two  dealt 
with  the  history  of  the  past,  and  one  cannot 
help  thinking  that  The  Spanish  Gypsy  would 
have  been  almost  as  successful  a  reproduction 
as  Romola  if  it  had  been  written  in  a  congenial 
medium.  In  these  laborious  research  did  the 
work  that  loving  memory  effected  in  the  other 
novels.  As  the  artist  went  to  work  more 
consciously,  so  the  motive  principle  of  her 
work  came  more  to  the  surface.  The  leading 
conception  of  modern  science  as  applied  to 
man,  the  influence  of  hereditary  transmission, 
was  transmuted  into  the  moral  principle  of 
the  claims  of  race.  In  the  novels  of  memory 
this  had  been  disguised  under  the  simpler 
form  of  family  love.  Maggie  Tulliver's  action 
at  the  end  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  is  entirely 
based  on  the  claims  of  family  as  opposed  to 
personal  affection  for  Stephen  Guest.  '  Love 
is  not  enough '  is  the  refrain,  and  this  comes 
out  still  more  strongly  on  the  broader  historic 
canvas  of  Romola  and  The  Spanish  Gypsy. 
The  point  of  Tito  Melema's  treachery  is  the 
absence  of  hereditary  connection  with  Floren- 
tine politics.  Fedalma  sacrifices  everything 
to  the  claims  of  race.  In  Daniel  Deronda  the 
difficult  task  was  attempted  of  raising  contem- 
porary events  to  a  ^wa-yz-historic  level.  By 
the  mere  force  of  genius  George  Eliot  strove 


GEORGE  ELIOT  9 

to  create  a  personality  which  she  deliberately 
asserted  to  be  on  a  level  with  the  great 
spiritual  leaders  of  mankind.  We  have 
reasons  for  saying  that  the  identification  of 
the  Jewish  prophet  of  Daniel  Deronda  with 
a  philosophic  Jew  described  by  Mr.  G.  H. 
Lewes  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  is  erroneous. 
The  Jews  give  the  greatest  example  in  modern 
times  of  fidelity  to  the  claims  of  race,  and  it 
was  natural  that  George  Eliot  should  have 
sympathised  with  Jewish  aspirations.  In  The 
Spanish  Gypsy  she  had  already  portrayed  a 
fine  figure  in  the  Jew  Sephardo.  In  Mordecai 
Cohen  she  attempted  to  idealise  the  history 
of  this  remarkable  race,  and  by  so  doing 
destroyed  the  chances  of  success  for  her  most 
elaborate  production.  Want  of  knowledge 
and  want  of  sympathy  with  the  Jewish  ideal 
will  probably  always  be  an  effectual  bar  to  the 
appreciation  of  Daniel  Deronda,  and  the  hero 
plays  the  difficult  part  of  irradiating  sympathy 
instead  of  doing  noble  deeds.  Yet  it  would 
be  rash  to  assert  that,  if  the  Jewish  race  again 
became  prominent  as  a  nationality,  Daniel 
Deronda  may  not  ultimately  figure  as  one  of 
the  favourite  books  of  the  Chosen  People. 
Even  as  it  is,  it  must  be  recognised  that  the 
conception  of  such  a  character  as  the  principal 
Jew  of  the  book  shows  singuLr  »rtistic 
daring. 


10  GEORGE  ELIOT 

While  Romola  and  Daniel  Deronda  are  of  a 
different  genre  from  the  other  novels,,  they 
have  a  share  of  their  excellences  of  style  and 
characterisation.  Since  attention  was  first 
drawn  to  the  point,  too  much  stress  has  been 
laid  on  the  '  scientific  technicalities '  of  her 
style  of  late  years.  She  would  not  have  been 
the  foremost  woman  of  her  age  if  she  had  not 
been  influenced  by  one  of  its  greatest  move- 
ments. Yet  the  evidences  of  this  are  as  clear 
in  her  earliest  as  in  her  latest  works.  In 
Janet's  Repentance  we  read  that  'the  idea  of 
'  duty  ...  is  to  the  moral  life  what  the 
<  addition  of  a  great  central  ganglion  is  to 
'  animal  life.'  In  the  second  page  of  Adam 
Bede,  Seth's  '  coronal  arch '  becomes  a  pro- 
minent feature  in  his  portrait.  In  The  Mill 
on  the  Floss  George  Eliot  cannot  let  us  know 
the  ingenious  trick  by  which  Bob  Jakin  gains 
a  couple  of  inches  in  measuring  out  his  flannel 
without  referring  to  his  thumb  as  the  '  mark  of 
difference  between  the  man  and  the  monkey.' 
It  is  not  quite  correct  to  say  that  her  style 
became  more  scientific  in  her  last  two  novels ; 
it  would  be  more  exact  to  say  that  it  became 
more  complex.  As  her  thoughts  became 
more  subtle,  her  sentences  naturally  became 
more  complex,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to 
determine  the  limits  beyond  which  subtlety 
and  complexity  become  inartistic.  Allied  to 


GEORGE  ELIOT  11 

this  error  is  the  statement,  frequently  repeated 
in  the  obituary  notices  of  the  newspapers, 
that  George  Eliot  was  essentially  an  analytic 
genius,  and  that  she  constructed  her  charac- 
ters out  of  analytic  materials.  The  idea  imme- 
diately suggested  by  this  curiously  uncritical 
assertion  is  that  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Bain's 
works  is  the  best  propaedeutic  for  the  crea- 
tion of  a  character  like  Dolly  Winthrop.  It 
would  be  far  more  correct  to  say  that  George 
Eliot's  genius  was  essentially  constructive,  and 
that  her  analytic  comments  are  the  results  of 
her  training  and  experience.  Like  all  great 
moderns,  George  Eliot  possessed  the  power 
of  feeling  deeply  and  of  simultaneously  intel- 
lectualising  her  feelings;  this  is  the  most 
characteristic  note  of  the  modern  mind.  In 
this  regard  it  is  interesting  to  notice  her 
accuracy  and  completeness,  which  at  first 
sight  appear  peculiarly  scientific.  Yet  it  is 
the  selective  accuracy  of  the  artist,  not  the 
exhaustive  exactness  of  the  savant,  that  she 
displays.  When  Cabel  Garth's  eyebrows 
'  make  their  pathetic  angle '  we  have  this 
trait  alone  given,  and  not  a  paragraph  from 
Mr.  Darwin's  Expression  of  the  Emotions.  It 
would  perhaps  be  more  appropriate  to  point 
to  her  stern  adherence  to  the  fact  of  human 
nature  as  answering  to  the  accuracy  and  im- 
partiality of  the  scientific  mind.  Maggie 


12  GEORGE  ELIOT 

Tulliver's  sudden  love  for  a  dandy  like  Stephen 
Guest  may  grate  against  Mr.  Swinburne's 
critical  feelings,  but  is,  no  doubt,  true  to 
human  nature.  It  is  this  fidelity  to  the 
facts  of  life  that  gives  the  prominent  sad- 
ness to  her  works.  She  has  chosen  tragic 
themes,  and  tragic  events  are  apt  to  be 
sad.  Perhaps  the  most  dominant  idea  of 
her  Weltanschauung  is  the  conception  of  law 
in  human  character. 

Our  deeds  still  travel  with  us  from  afar, 

And  what  we  have  been  makes  us  what  we  are, 

might  stand  as  a  motto  to  all  her  works. 

It  is  character  in  process  of  change  that 
engages  all  her  interest.  Hence  there  is  less 
of  the  conventional,  less  of  the  worldly,  in 
her  work  than  in  most  great  novelists.  We 
have  soul  speaking  to  soul :  Dinah  to  Hetty, 
Savonarola  to  Romola,  Felix  to  Esther,  Doro- 
thea to  Ladislaw,  Mordecai  to  Deronda.  When 
the  conventional  is  introduced  it  is  chiefly  for 
humorous  purposes;  the  humour  of  the  im- 
mortal scene  at  the  Rainbow  Inn  in  Silas 
Marner  consists  in  its  archaic  conventionality. 
Interest  of  character  is,  however,  the  pre- 
dominant interest  of  George  Eliot's  work. 
Nearly  one-half  of  Adam  Bede  is  taken  up 
by  the  first  week  of  the  action,  during  which 
we  learn  to  know  the  chief  characters.  The 


GEORGE  ELIOT  13 

rest  of  the  book  hurries  through  nearly  two 
years  before  Adam  is  united  to  Dinah.  This 
attention  to  characterisation  has  exercised  a 
somewhat  deleterious  effect  on  her  plots;  so 
long  as  we  know  what  her  characters  are  and 
have  become,,  it  does  not  so  much  matter 
what  becomes  of  them.  Hence  the  frequent 
resource  to  the  Deus  ex  machind  of  sudden 
death ;  it  is  astonishing  how  many  of  her 
characters  are  snatched  from  our  view  in  this 
way.  Death  by  drowning  seems  to  be  the 
favourite  method:  Dunstan  Cass,  Tom  and 
Maggie  Tulliver,  Tito  Melema,  Grandcourt, 
all  disappear  in  this  abrupt  way.  It  would 
be  unjust  to  pass  from  this  aspect  of  her  work 
without  a  word  of  praise  to  her  admirable 
range  of  power,  and  to  the  marvellous  ability 
she  possessed  of  giving  life  to  her  minor 
characters.  The  moral  earnestness  of  her 
work  is  another  prominent f  note/  With  her 
the  novel  was  morality  teaching  by  example. 
And  the  teaching  was  of  an  unusually  lofty 
character.  Renunciation  of  self,  subordina- 
tion to  the  social  life,  were  the  great  texts. 
Egoism  is  the  canker  of  the  soul:  Hetty, 
Tito  Melema,  Grandcourt,  are  prominent 
examples.  Still  more  noteworthy  is  the  ter- 
rible example  of  the  crippling  of  another's 
life  by  one's  egoism,  .  s  in  Rosamund  Vincy 

and  Lydgate,  to  whom  Casaubon  and  Doro- 

><    ^ 

STIVERS:.. 


14  GEORGE  ELIOT 

thea  form  so  fine  a  parallel  and  contrast.  The 
moral  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy  lies  in  the  ruin 
wrought  to  the  great  schemes  of  Zarca  by 
the  egoistic  loves  of  Silva  and  Fedalma.  The 
whole  aim  of  the  novel  as  George  Eliot  wrote 
it  might  be  summed  up  in  the  words,  /caflapons 
of  egoism. 

The  whole  artistic  career  was  dominated 
by  these  ethical  aims ;  in  her  last  work.  The 
Impressions  of  Theophrastus  Such,  she  applied 
herself  consciously  to  direct  ethical  teaching. 
The  book  consists  of  disconnected  examples 
of  popular  moral  errors  from  which  George 
Eliot  would  free  the  world,  'debasing  the 
moral  currency/  '  the  modern  Hep !  Hep ! 
Hep ! '  and  so  on.  As  a  consequence,  the 
artistic  merits  of  Theophrastus  Suck  were  far 
below  those  of  her  other  books,  and  it  will 
never  have  much  more  than  a  pathological 
interest  for  the  student  of  her  works. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  her  attempts  in 
verse.  George  Eliot  will  always  afford  a 
striking  example  of  the  truth  that  the  essen- 
tial quality  of  the  poet  is  the  gift  of  song. 
All  the  other  qualities  required  for  poetry 
were  possessed  by  her  in  high  measure,  yet 
it  is  granted  on  all  sides  that  her  poetical 
attempts  were  failures.  The  'brother  and 
sister '  sonnets  and  the  Comtean  hymn,  '  O 
may  I  join  the  choir  invisible  ! '  in  the  Jubal 


GEORGE  ELIOT  15 

volume,  a  speech  of  Zarca's  ('Nay,  never 
falter'),  and  a  fine  description  of  Truth  by 
Sephardo  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  with,  per- 
haps, Ladislaw's  song,  '  Oh  me,  oh  me,  what 
frugal  cheer  my  love  doth  feed  upon ! ' — 
these  may  find  a  place  in  anthologies,  but 
that  is  all. 

Writing  now  with  the  sense  of  her  loss 
still  fresh,  it  is  impossible  to  forget  that,  for 
those  who  knew  her  personally,  she  herself 
was  her  greatest  work.  By  her  own  training 
she  made  herself  probably  the  most  accom- 
plished woman  the  century  has  seen.  She 
brought  to  the  world  of  art  a  greater  extent 
of  culture  than  any  predecessor,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Goethe.  Not  alone  was 
she  a  veritable  pundit  in  languages,  with  mas- 
tery of  French,  German,  and  Italian,  and 
serviceable  knowledge  of  Latin,  Greek,  Span- 
ish, and  Hebrew ;  she  was  widely  learned  in 
science  and  philosophy,  and  deeply  read  in 
history  ;  her  works  teem  with  evidence  of  her 
intimate  knowledge  of  music  and  painting. 
Add  to  all  these  accomplishments  a  width  of 
sympathy  and  acuteness  of  observation  seldom 
equalled,  and  one  can  form  some  idea  of  the 
rich  nature  just  taken  from  us.  She  could 
draw  such  characters  as  Maggie  Tulliver  and 
Dorothea  Brooke,  Mary  Garth  and  Gwendolen 
Harleth,  Fedalma  and  Romola,  because  she 


16  GEORGE  ELIOT 

herself  had  much  that  was  present  in  them. 
She  has  done  a  great  deal  for  the  cause  of 
woman  by  direct  teaching,  but  she  has  done 
most  by  giving  the  world  assurance  of  the 
possibilities  of  woman's  excellence. 


THEOPHRASTUS   SUCH1 

NY  new  book  of  George  Eliot  has 
to  encounter  the  formidable 
rivalry  of  her  earlier  produc- 
tions. In  this  age  of  competi- 
tive examinations  it  is  inevitable 
that  some  attempt  should  be  made  to  '  place ' 
the  new  work  in  its  ( order  of  merit/  Such  a 
test,  however,  tells  with  crushing  force  against 
the  Impressions  of  Theophrastus  Such,  which  is 
slighter  in  conception,  less  finished  in  execu- 
tion, and  altogether  of  less  artistic  value  than 
any  other  work  that  has  appeared  under  her 
name.  In  it  are  seen  all  the  characteristics 
of  her  later  '  manner '  which  critics  have  had 
to  deprecate.  The  scientific  interest  and  tone 
of  her  second  period  culminate  in  these 
studies  of  mental  pathology.  The  consummate 
literary  artist  has  degenerated  into  the  student 
of  social  psychology. 

George  Eliot's  literary  development  falls 
clearly  and  sharply  into  two  stages.  In  the 
earlier  period,  from  the  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 
to  Felix  Holt  (with  the  exception  of  Romola, 
which  stands  apart  in  a  sphere  of  its  own, 

B 


18  GEORGE  ELIOT 

where  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  had  it  been  written 
in  a  natural  medium,  might  have  joined  it), 
she  went  back  with  loving  memory  to  the 
days  and  scenes  of  her  childhood.  In  that 
wonderful  series  of  works  she  produced  living 
pictures  of  mid-England  in  the  pre-Reform 
days  before  old  Leisure  was  dead,  and  while 
the  modern  spirit  was  unborn.  For  width  of 
conception,  for  accuracy  of  touch,  for  nobil- 
ity of  tone,  those  works  have  a  place  apart 
in  English  fiction.  The  next  two  novels, 
Middlemarch  and  Daniel  Deronda,  displayed  a 
new  set  of  literary  motives  in  their  composi- 
tion. The  loving  interest  of  the  artist  in 
human  nature  was  fused  with  the  intellectual 
interest  of  the  scientific  observer  of  the  social 
organism.  The  tales  moved  in  a  larger  sphere, 
had  a  wider  scope,  and  also  a  deeper  back- 
ground than  the  earlier  works.  A  new  view 
of  the  relations  of  man  and  society,  and  with 
it  a  new  philosophy  of  history,  informed  every 
page  and  set  every  incident  in  a  new  light. 
Along  with  this  change  or  development  of 
tone  there  went  a  noticeable  change  of 
manner.  Dealing  with  conceptions  novel  to 
her  readers,  George  Eliot  had  to  put  them 
directly  before  their  eyes  in  passages  only 
interesting  from  a  speculative  point  of  view. 
But  this  very  need  of  explanation  argued  in- 
complete f  artistry '  (to  use  a  word  of  Mr. 


1 THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH  '  19 

Browning's);  there  was  evidently  not  that 
direct  rapport  with  her  audience  which  is  a 
necessary  pre-requisite  of  all  great  literary 
art.  However  well  suited  Comtean  concep- 
tions may  be  for  appeals  to  the  literary 
emotions,  such  appeals  cannot  fail  to  be  less 
telling  when  accompanied  by  elaborate  ex- 
planations of  the  conceptions  upon  which 
their  efficacy  depends.  This  reflective  or 
scientific  side  of  her  later  works  has  seriously 
diminished  their  effectiveness,  and  the  attempt 
to  rouse  an  interest  in  the  history  of  modern 
Judaism  in  Daniel  Deronda  was,  with  the 
ordinary  reader,  a  complete  failure.  And  it 
must  be  remembered  that  in  really  great 
works  of  art  the  decision  rests  with  the 
'  ordinary  reader ' ;  success  is  here  the  real 
test  of  merit.  No  poem  is  great  if  only  a 
small  coterie  admire  it.  What  is  to  be  the 
decision  on  George  Eliot's  last  two  great 
works  depends  upon  the  future  of  the  specula- 
tive system  with  which  they  are  connected. 
If  the  social  philosophy  there  taught  be  that 
of  the  future,  then  Middlemarch  and  Daniel 
Deronda  may  become  as  gospels.  But  the 
risk  has  been  run  of  subordinating  the  eternal 
truths  of  art  to  what  may  be  the  temporary 
opinions  of  science ;  and,  in  any  case,  the 
presence  of  the  purely  analytical  element  in 
her  later  works  must  necessarily  detract  from 


20  GEORGE  ELIOT 

their  artistic  value  as  indicating  a  certain 
spiritual  divergence  of  George  Eliot  from  her 
readers.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  intellectual 
or  scientific  element  in  the  last  two  works 
did  alienate  her  audience's  sympathy,  and 
thus  frustrated  the  artist's  function,  to  '  arrest, 
arouse,  and  excite.' 

This  scientific  element  comes  to  a  head  in 
Theophrastus  Such.  Instead  of  a  new  novel, 
George  Eliot  has  given  us  some  careful  but 
unsympathetic  analyses  of  certain  phases  of 
human  character:  admirable  dissections,  no 
doubt;  but  life  has  fled  under  the  scalpel.  Our 
emotions  refuse  to  be  moved  by  a  description 
of  Aliquis  or  Quispiam  ;  and,  what  is  more,  the 
author  herself  fails  to  feel  the  artist's  sympathy 
with  her  creations.  The  pathos  of  Merman's 
struggle  against  the  errors  of  Grampus,  in  the 
section  entitled  '  How  we  encourage  Research/ 
is  nullified  by  a  certain  kindly  contempt  which 
finds  expression  in  some  rather  Teutonic  or 
f  cetacean '  witticisms.  And  throughout  there 
is  a  tendency  to  harshness  in  censure  which  is 
not  to  be  found  in  the  writer's  more  extended 
works.  The  whole  book  is  devoted  to  the 
foibles  and  failings  of  man,  and  thus  leaves  an 
unpleasant  feeling.  The  head,  not  the  heart, 
has  produced  this  book,  the  reader  feels,  and 
his  heart  fails  to  respond  to  pure  intellect.  It 
is  worthy  of  note  that  most  of  the  sketches 


'THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH'  21 

deal  with  phases  of  literary  life  which  have 
been  the  object  of  George  Eliot's  mature  and 
conscious  observation.  It  would  seem  that 
the  novelist's  plastic  period  closes  at  an  early 
age  :  Dickens  was  never  at  home  with  railways, 
George  Eliot  as  an  artist  feels  strange  after 
the  Reform  Bill  is  passed.  Of  later  London 
life  she  has,  no  doubt,  been  an  observant 
spectator,  but  there  is  the  greatest  possible 
difference  shown  in  the  reproductions  in  her 
earliest  and  latest  work  :  spontaneous  art  in 
the  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,  conscious  effort  in 
these  Sketches  of  Literary  Life.  And  in  her 
latest  book  the  nearest  approach  to  the  manner 
of  her  first  period  is  displayed  in  the  supposed 
autobiographical  recollections  of  Mr.  Such 
when  he  is  f  looking  back '  to  '  the  time  when 
'  the  fitful  gleams  of  a  spring  day  used  to  show 
1  me  my  own  shadow  as  that  of  a  small  boy  on 
'  a  small  pony,  riding  by  the  side  of  a  larger 
'  cob-mounted  shadow  over  the  breezy  up- 
'  lands  which  we  used  to  dignify  with  the 
'  name  of  hills,  or  along  by-roads  with  broad 
( grassy  borders  and  hedgerows  reckless  of 
1  utility,  on  our  way  to  outlying  hamlets, 
'  whose  groups  of  inhabitants  were  as  distinct 
'  to  my  imagination  as  if  they  had  belonged 
'  to  different  regions  of  the  globe/ 

The  passages  descriptive  of  earlier  England 
in  the  same  section  are  in  her  very  best  style, 


22  GEORGE  ELIOT 

and  contrast  markedly  with  the  first  section, 
'Looking  Inward/  where  the  pseudonymous 
writer  analyses  with  subtle  skill  his  claims  as 
a  scientific  observer  and  describer  of  other 
men's  failings.  The  following  quotation  shows 
the  old  manner  : — 

'Our  rural  tracts — where  no  Babel- 
chimney  scales  the  heavens — are  without 
'  mighty  objects  to  fill  the  soul  with  the  sense 
'  of  an  outer  world  unconquerably  aloof  from 
'  our  efforts.  The  wastes  are  playgrounds 
'  (and  let  us  try  to  keep  them  such  for  the 
'  children's  children  who  will  inherit  no  other 

*  sort  of  demesne) ;  the  grasses  and  reeds  nod 
'  to  each  other  over  the  river,   but  we  have 
'  cut  a  canal  close  by ;  the  very  heights  laugh 

*  with  corn  in  August  or  lift  the  plough-team 
'  against  the  sky  in  September.     Then  comes 
'  a  crowd  of  burly  navvies  with  pickaxes  and 

*  barrows,  and  while  hardly  a  wrinkle  is  made 
'  in  the  fading  mother's  face  or  a  new  curve 
'  of  health  in  the  blooming  girl's,  the  hills  are 
'  cut  through  or  the  breaches  between  them 
'  spanned,  we  choose  our  level,  and  the  white 
f  steam-pennon   flies   along   it.     But   because 
'  our  land  shows  this  readiness  to  be  changed, 
s  all  signs  of  permanence  upon  it  raise  a  tender 
'  attachment  instead  of  awe :  some  of  us,  at 
'  least,  love  the  scanty  relics  of  our  forests, 
'  and  are  thankful  if  a  bush  is  left  of  the  old 


'  THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH '  23 

1  hedgerow.  A  crumbling  bit  of  wall  where 
'  the  delicate  ivy-leafed  toad-flax  hangs  its 
'  light  branches,  or  a  bit  of  grey  thatch  with 
(  patches  of  dark  moss  on  its  shoulder  and 
(  a  troop  of  grass-stems  on  its  ridge,  is  a 
'  thing  to  visit.  And  then  the  tiled  roof  of 
f  cottage  and  homestead,  of  the  long  cow-shed 
'  where  generations  of  the  milky  mothers 
f  have  stood  patiently,  of  the  broad-shouldered 
e  barns  where  the  old-fashioned  flail  once  made 
'  resonant  music,  while  the  watch-dog  barked 
f  at  the  timidly  venturesome  fowls  making 
'  pecking  raids  on  the  outflying  grain — the 
'  roofs  that  have  looked  out  from  among  the 
e  elms  and  walnut-trees,  or  beside  the  yearly 
'  group  of  hay  and  corn  stacks,  or  below  the 
e  square  stone  steeple,  gathering  their  grey 
'  or  ochre-tinted  lichens  and  their  olive-green 
c  mosses  under  all  ministries, — let  us  praise 
'  the  sober  harmonies  they  give  to  our  land- 
(  scape,  helping  to  unite  us  pleasantly  with 
'  the  elder  generations  who  tilled  the  soil  for 
c  us  before  we  were  born,  and  paid  heavier 
1  and  heavier  taxes,  with  much  grumbling, 
'  but  without  that  deepest  root  of  corruption 
1  — the  self-indulgent  despair  which  cuts  down 
'  and  consumes  and  never  plants/ 

The  next  quotation  illustrates  the  new 
style  :— 

'  Introspection  which  starts  with  the  pur- 


24  GEORGE  ELIOT 

*  pose  of  finding  out  one's  own  absurdities  is  not 
'  likely  to  be  very  mischievous,  yet  of  course 
'  it  is  not  free  from  dangers  any  more  than 
'  breathing  is,  or  the  other  functions  that  keep 
'  us  alive  and  active.  To  judge  of  others  by 
'  one's-self  is  in  its  most  innocent  meaning 
'  the  briefest  expression  for  our  only  method 
'  of  knowing  mankind  ;  yet  we  perceive  it  has 
'  come  to  mean  in  many  cases  either  the 
'  vulgar  mistake  which  reduces  every  man's 
'  value  to  the  very  low  figure  at  which  the 
'  valuer  himself  happens  to  stand ;  or  else,  the 
e  amiable  illusion  of  the  higher  nature  misled 
'  by  a  too  generous  construction  of  the  lower. 
'  One  cannot  give  a  recipe  for  wise  judgment : 
'  it  resembles  appropriate  muscular  action, 
'  which  is  attained  by  the  myriad  lessons  in 
'  nicety  of  balance  and  of  aim  that  only 
1  practice  can  give.  The  danger  of  the  in- 
'  verse  procedure,  judging  of  self  by  what  one 
'  observes  in  others,  if  it  is  carried  on  with 
'  much  impartiality  and  keenness  of  discern- 
'  ment,  is  that  it  has  a  laming  effect,  enfeeb- 
'  ling  the  energies  of  indignation  and  scorn, 
'  which  are  the  proper  scourges  of  wrong-doing 
'  and  meanness,  and  which  should  continually 
'  feed  the  wholesome  restraining  power  of 
'  public  opinion.' 

In  terming  these  Impressions  scientific,  we 
do   not   mean   to  say   that  they  are    written 


'  THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH '  25 

in  any  scientific  jargon ;  indeed,  we  have  less 
of  sesquipedalian  technicalities  than  in  Daniel 
Deronda;  but  the  whole  tone  is  scientific. 
Without  indulging  in  any  such  elaborate 
antitheses  as  are  the  glory  of  the  schoolboy's 
essay,  it  may  be  said  that  the  artistic  and 
scientific  modes  of  treating  human  nature 
differ  in  this,  that  science  seeks  to  find  general 
analogies,  while  art  aims  at  individual  real- 
ities. The  sketchy  character  of  these  studies 
no  doubt  brings  into  greater  prominence  their 
want  of  artistic  reality.  If  the  author  had 
elaborated  any  of  them  into  novels  or  even 
into  '  scenes,'  the  artist  instinct  would  have 
given  life  to  the  dead  bones  of  scientific 
analysis.  And  what  is  more,  the  reader  would 
have  been  spared  that  unsympathy  with  her 
own  puppets  which  may  be  scientific  impar- 
tiality, but  is  certainly  inartistic  harshness. 
Humour  would  then  have  dealt  tenderly  with 
those  deficiencies  which  wit,  and  that  of  a 
somewhat  lumbering  character,  now  mercilessly 
exposes.  One  of  the  sections  deals  with  the 
habit  of  scoffing  and  parody  as  '  debasing  the 
moral  currency/  yet  what  is  it  but  debasing 
the  artistic  currency  to  ring  the  changes  on 
Grampus,  Lord  Narwhal,  Prof.  Sperm  N. 
Whale,  Dugong,  and  Butzkopf  (=Delphinus 
orca)  ?  The  name^Merman  brings  into  humor- 
ous contrast  his  more  human  qualities ;  but  is 


26  GEORGE  ELIOT 

not  the  ' ancient  and  fish-like  smell'  with 
which  Teutonic  erudition  is,  by  implication, 
connected  in  these  appellatives,  just  a  case  of 
'  debasing  the  moral  currency '  in  its  depreci- 
ation of  the  minute  accuracy  and  unselfish 
devotion  of  German  scholarship  ?  Indeed,  the 
names  throughout  throw  much  light  on  the 
characters  of  the  book.  In  most  cases  they 
represent  exactly  that  particular  phase  of  a 
character  which  is  brought  forward,  the  limb 
which  is  to  represent  the  whole  figure.  We 
can  all  guess  beforehand  to  what  sort  of  char- 
acters names  like  Touchwood,  Mordax,  and 
Scintilla  will  be  applied.  The  more  individual 
the  name  the  more  of  the  uncertainty  of  real 
life  about  the  character:  that  will  be  found 
to  be  a  good  working  test.  Thus  Pummel, 
who  serves  in  some  inexplicable  way  as  a 
'  watchdog  of  knowledge/  stands  out  well  de- 
fined. 'What  is  the  cause  of  the  tides, 
'  Pummel  ? '  '  Well,  sir,  nobody  rightly  knows. 
'  Many  gives  their  opinion,  but  if  I  was  to 
'  give  mine,  it  'ud  be  different.'  That  is  a  touch 
worthy  of  the  hand  that  drew  Mrs.  Poyser 
and  Dolly  Winthrop. 

And  as  the  scientific  spirit  shows  itself  in 
these  unreal  abstractions  of  truncated  char- 
acters, so  we  have  it  again  in  the  manner  of 
their  presentation.  The  inordinate  length  of 
the  sentences  and  the  frequent  obscurity  of 


. 

'THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH'  27 

sense  are  other  symptoms  of  the  same  char- 
acteristic. Science  abhors  the  epigram ;  its 
half-truth^  though  it  may  be  the  better  half  of 
truth,  is  repugnant  to  the  exactness  of  science. 
For  purposes  of  science  we  must  have  all 
the  amplifications  and  exceptions  necessary  for 
accuracy,  and  consequently  we  must  have  long 
and  unwieldy  sentences.  In  Theophrastus  Such 
we  have  noticed  one  sentence  dragging  its 
laborious  length  over  twenty- two  lines,  and  we 
reckon  the  average  length  at  about  eight  lines. 
In  one  place  it  takes  two  whole  pages  (pp.  288, 
289)  to  complete  four  sentences.  Another 
f  note '  of  the  scientific  style  is  its  tendency 
to  draw  out  all  the  attenuated  meaning  of  a 
sentence.  We  have  many  instances  of  sen- 
tences which  contain  truths  that  are  tolerably 
obvious,  in  phraseology  by  no  means  obvious 
to  a  first  reading.  The  book  throughout  is 
hard  reading,  and  the  style  at  times  harsh 
in  the  extreme ;  what  a  falling  off  from  the 
limpid  truths  of  her  earlier  books  !  Even  in 
Daniel  Deronda  the  reader  comes  across  such 
fine  things  as  c  Those  who  trust  us  educate  us ' 
— a  noble  truth,  nobly  expressed.  He  will 
have  difficulty  in  finding  a  single  sentence  in 
this  book  which  is  worthy  to  be  put  by  its  side. 
The  artistic  value  of  the  book  is  further 
spoiled  by  its  evident  didactic  purpose.  If 
the  characters  here  delineated  do  not  '  adorn 


28  GEORGE  ELIOT 

a  tale/  they  are  certainly  intended  to  '  point 
a  moral.'  Throughout  George  Eliot's  literary 
career  ethical  interests  have  been  predominant. 
With  her  the  novel  has  been  morality  teaching 
by  example.  But  hitherto  she  has  been  content 
with  the  subtle  insinuation  of  the  artist,  and 
has  left  alone  the  direct  assault  of  the  preacher ; 
she  has  given  texts,  not  sermons.  But  in  her 
last  book  there  is  rather  too  much  direct 
preaching;  it  might  be  a  little  hard,  but  it 
would  not  be  altogether  untrue,  to  call  the 
Impressions  skeleton  sermons.  Even  from 
the  ethical  point  of  view  the  result  is  unsatis- 
factory; how  much  less  effective  a  lesson  is 
taught  by  Mixtus  than  by  Lydgate  in  Middle- 
march,  though  this  is  partly  due  to  neces- 
sarily lighter  treatment.  With  the  character 
of  her  teaching  every  one  is  now  familiar. 
Subordinate  yourself  to  the  social  organism, 
suppress  self;  this  is  her  ever-recurring  cry. 
All  honour  to  the  nobleness  and  purity  of  the 
teaching.  After  all,  that  is  the  characteristic 
which  raises  this  book  above  all  other  descrip- 
tions of  'characters/  from  the  second  book 
of  Aristotle's  Rhetoric  to  La  Bruyere;  but 
it  comes  too  often  to  the  surface,  is  pressed 
too  markedly  upon  our  notice. 

Nowhere  does  the  inferior  effectiveness  of 
the  intellectual  as  compared  with  the  artistic 
treatment  of  a  subject  come  into  greater 


'THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH'  20 

prominence  than  in  the  last  chapter  of  the 
book  'The  Modern  Hep!  Hep  !  Hep  !'  (the 
rallying  cry  of  the  persecutions  of  the  Jews  by 
the  Crusaders).  That  George  Eliot  should 
feel  tempted  to  defend  her  choice  of  a  subject 
in  Daniel  Deronda  is  only  natural;  but  the 
striking  thing  is  how  far  inferior  is  this 
defence,  appealing  to  the  intellect,  when 
compared  with  exactly  the  same  arguments  as 
urged  by  the  passionate  rhetoric  of  Mordecai 
in  the  book  itself.  Ignorance  of,  and  want  of 
sympathy  with,  modern  Judaism  may  blind 
the  reader  to  the  extraordinary  power  of 
Mordecai's  orations,  perhaps  the  greatest  tour 
de  force  of  their  author ;  but  any  one  can  see 
how  much  more  effective,  even  from  an  argu- 
mentative point  of  view,  are  the  passionate 
utterances  of  the  latest  prophet  than  the  calm 
reasoning  of  his  creator. 

We  have  dealt  with  Impressions  of  Theo- 
phrastus  Such  in  comparison  with  its  author's 
other  works,  and  it  is  clear  that  it  cannot,  in 
conception,  style,  or  effectiveness,  stand  the 
test.  It  may  consequently  appear  somewhat 
unfair  to  upbraid  the  book  for  failing  to  be 
what  it  does  not  profess  to  be.  But  a  great 
artist  owes  duties  to  the  world  as  much  as 
deserves  gratitude  from  it.  When  one  who 
has  it  in  her  power  to  add  to  the  world's 
wealth  of  beauty  turns  aside  from  the  arduous 


30  GEORGE  ELIOT 

conception  of  a  great  work  to  execute  pre- 
paratory sketches  not  worthy  of  mention  by 
the  side  of  her  other  works,  it  is  impossible  to 
refrain  from  deploring  the  loss  to  the  world. 
Let  others  take  upon  themselves  to  compare 
these  'characters'  with  similar  literary  pro- 
ductions ;  for  us  none  but  herself  can  be  her 
parallel.  Others  may  take  up  the  half-disguised 
challenge  of  the  motto  from  Phaedrus  (3  Prol. 
45-50);  we  do  not  care  to  discuss  whether 
Pepin  is  Mr.  Gladstone  or  Dugong  Du  Bois- 
Reymond. 

For  us,,  the  chief  interest  in  George  Eliot's 
new  work  has  been  that  which  we  are  confident 
will  be  its  chief  interest  to  the  future  students 
of  her  works.  The  light  thrown  by  it  on  the 
scientific  strain  in  her  literary  character,  the 
light  thrown  upon  the  workmanship  of  her 
second  period,  give  the  book  a  sort  of  patho- 
logical interest  to  the  student  of  literature. 
The  choice  of  the  autobiographical  form  (used 
only  once  before,  in  the  remarkable  sketch  a  la 
E.  A.  Poe,  The  Lifted  Veil)  may  have  its 
significance  for  the  next  generation.  But, 
apart  from  these  points  of  view,  the  studies 
are  but  chips  from  the  workshop,  which  might 
well  have  been  left  on  the  ground,  only  to  be 
lifted  thence  at  the  time  when  everything  of 
the  author  shall  become  precious. 


'ESSAYS' 

iHESE  essays  will  not  add  to  the 
reputation  of  their  author.  Re- 
printed chiefly  from  the  West- 
minster Review,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  say  that  they  stand  promi- 
nently above  the  general  average  of  such  essays. 
Each  of  the  quarterlies  has  created  for  itself  a 
type,  and  these  reviews  are  of  the  type  familiar 
to  us  in  such  writers  as  the  late  W.  R.  Greg. 
They  date  from  the  period  before  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  had  imported  the  method  of 
Sainte-Beuve  into  English  criticism,  and  in  con- 
sequence they  suffer  by  comparison  with  later 
work  of  a  more  subtle  and  artistic  character. 
George  Eliot's  essays  have  not  sufficient  in- 
dividuality to  deserve  new  life  for  their  own 
sake  ;  on  the  other  hand,  they  throw  valuable 
light  on  certain  problems  connected  with  her 
art,  and  on  this  account  merit  republication. 

The  collection  inevitably  raises  what  must 
be  the  chief  critical  problem  in  connection 
with  the  literary  career  of  George  Eliot. 
How  is  it,  the  reader  is  impelled  to  ask,  that 
a  mind  which  produced  these  essays  chiefly 

31 


32  GEORGE  ELIOT 

during  the  years  1855  and  1856  could  have 
given  the  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  to  the  world 
a  year  later?  What  was  the  determining 
motive  which  changed  the  translator  of  Strauss 
and  Feuerbach  and  the  writer  of  these  essays 
into  the  loving  creator  of  Mr.  Gilfil,  of  Bartle 
Massey,  and  of  Dinah  Morris?  It  is  not  so 
much  the  late  flowering  of  her  genius  that  is 
noteworthy.  The  end  of  the  '  thirties '  seems 
the  appropriate  period  for  a  novelist's  debut. 
Both  Thackeray  and  Miss  Austen  were  thirty- 
seven  (the  same  age  as  George  Eliot  in  1857) 
when  Vanity  Fair  and  Sense  and  Sensibility 
respectively  appeared ;  Trollope  was  thirty- 
nine  when  The  Warden  was  published;  and 
Walter  Scott  was  as  old  as  forty-three  when 
Waverley  first  delighted  the  world.  But  all 
these  had  given  indication  in  one  way  or 
another  of  their  powers,  and  had  certainly  not 
given  indication  of  ability  of  quite  a  different 
calibre  and  in  quite  an  opposite  tendency  of 
mind;  whereas  George  Eliot  up  to  her  first 
appearance  as  a  novelist  had  shown  marked 
capacity  for  abstract  thought,  the  very  an- 
tithesis of  the  concrete  imagination  essential 
for  the  novelist. 

Up  to  the  age  of  thirty-seven  what  do  we 
find  in  George  Eliot's  writings?  A  vivid 
appreciation  of  the  course  of  religious  thought, 
a  considerable  power  of  social  generalisation, 


'ESSAYS'  S3 

and,  above  all,  a  deep  interest  in  the  scientific 
and  philosophic  speculations  of  her  time.  If 
any  one  had  ventured  a  prophecy  of  her 
future  career,  he  would  surely  have  anticipated 
some  incursion  into  the  region  of  religious 
reconstruction,  as  was  the  case  with  her  friend 
Miss  Hennell.  He  might  have  foreseen  in 
her  another  Harriet  Martineau,  with  a  deeper 
ethical  basis,  but  with  the  same  tendency  to 
pure  reason.  The  last  thought  that  would 
have  entered  the  minds  of  her  most  intimate 
friends  up  to  that  date  would  have  been  that 
Marian  Evans  would  revive  in  the  enduring 
form  of  art  the  reminiscences  of  her  early 
days,  which  she  seemed  to  have  left  so  far 
behind  her. 

Certainly  the  essays  before  us  indicated  no 
such  future.  One  of  them,  indeed,  dealing 
with  the  Natural  History  of  German  Life, 
proves  that  George  Eliot  had  observed  as 
closely  the  English  peasant  as  her  author 
Riehl  had  studied  the  German  species.  Take 
the  following  picture  : — 

( Observe  a  company  of  haymakers.  When 
'  you  see  them  at  a  distance,  tossing  up  the 
f  forkfuls  of  hay  in  the  golden  light,  while  the 
'  waggon  creeps  slowly  with  its  increasing 
'  burthen  over  the  meadow,  and  the  bright 
'  green  space  which  tells  of  work  done  gets 
f  larger  and  larger,  you  pronounce  the  scene 
c 


34  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  "  smiling,"  and  you  think  these  companions 
'  in  labour  must  be  as  bright  and  cheerful  as 
'  the  picture  to  which  they  give  animation. 
'  Approach  nearer,  and  you  will  certainly  find 
'  that  haymaking  time  is  a  time  for  joking, 
'  especially  if  there  are  women  among  the 
'  labourers ;  but  the  coarse  laugh  that  bursts 
'  out  every  now  and  then,  and  expresses  the 
'  triumphant  taunt,  is  as  far  as  possible  from 
'  your  conception  of  idyllic  merriment.  That 
'  delicious  effervescence  of  the  mind  which  we 
'  call  fun  has  no  equivalent  for  the  northern 
'  peasant,  except  tipsy  revelry;  the  only  realm 
'  of  fancy  and  imagination  for  the  English 
'  clown  exists  at  the  bottom  of  the  third 
(  quart-pot.' 

This  passage  certainly  shows  observation, 
but  for  all  one  can  tell  it  may  merely  be  the 
scientific  observation  of  the  psychologist,  not 
the  sympathetic  reproduction  of  the  artist. 
As  yet  it  lacks  the  concretising  touch. 
Similarly,  when  the  writer  goes  on  to  remark, 
'  It  is  quite  true  that  a  thresher  is  likely  to 
'  be  innocent  of  any  adroit  arithmetical  cheat- 
'  ing,  but  he  is  not  the  less  likely  to  carry 
'  home  his  master's  corn  in  his  shoes  and 
'  pocket,'  we  have  no  warranty  that  this  could 
be  expanded  into  the  Ben  Tholoway  of  Adam 
Bede.  And  even  when  George  Eliot  notices 
the  custom  of  distinguishing  cousins  by  refer- 


'ESSAYS'  35 

ring  them  to  their  father's  name,  we  cannot  de- 
duce the  figure  of  Timothy's  Bess's  Ben  in  the 
same  novel.  Observation  is,  indeed,  needed 
for  the  novel,  but  some  kinds  of  observation 
are  destructive  of  all  individualising.  Tell  a 
painter  to  observe  his  hand  as  he  paints  and 
the  result  will  be  disastrous.  Similarly,  if  a 
writer  consciously  notices  the  processes  which 
make  up  his  creations,  they  are  doomed  as 
artistic  presentations.  Observation  must  have 
become  unconscious  and  ingrained  in  the 
artist's  mind  before  it  can  aid  in  giving  the 
realistic  details  of  the  novel. 

And  further,  the  novelist  requires  some- 
thing more  than  keen  observation  of  the 
workings  of  human  nature;  this  is  useless 
without  the  power  and  the  love  of  story-tell- 
ing. Nothing  in  these  essays,  nothing  in  the 
impression  George  Eliot  made  on  her  friends, 
indicated  her  possession  of  the  faculty  that 
builds  up  incident  and  character  into  a  story. 
To  the  last  she  was  somewhat  deficient  in 
this,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  she  displays 
none  of  the  worker's  joy  in  her  own  produc- 
tion. To  tell  a  story  requires  that  one  should 
have  lived  a  story.  And  it  was  probably  the 
exceptional  nature  of  her  relations  with 
George  Henry  Lewes,  which  commenced  in 
1854,  that  brought  about  the  change  in 
George  Eliot  which  we  have  been  attempting 


36  GEORGE  ELIOT 

to  point  out.  Without  going  into  the  merits 
of  the  case,  for  which  there  are  at  present  no 
trustworthy  data,  it  is  clear  that  to  George 
Eliot  the  anti-social  attitude  which  circum- 
stances caused  her  to  take  up  brought  a 
complete  revolution  in  her  whole  moral  being, 
which  was  shaken  to  the  depths.  The  modern 
novel  is  one  of  problem,  not  of  action,  and  her 
own  problematic  position  rendered  her  the 
more  sensitive  to  the  artistic  side  of  this  form 
of  the  novel. 

These  remarks  may  serve  to  illustrate  a 
remarkable  passage  in  the  same  essay  from 
which  the  previous  quotations  were  taken. 
George  Eliot's  theory  of  the  function  of  the 
novel  is  there  given,  as  well  as  her  view  of 
Dickens's  art,  which  was  developed  by  George 
Henry  Lewes  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  after 
Dickens's  death.  The  whole  passage  deserves 
quotation : — 

'  The  greatest  benefit  we  owe  to  the  artist, 
*  whether  painter,  poet,  or  novelist,  is  the  ex- 
'  tension  of  our  sympathies.  Appeals  founded 
c  on  generalisations  and  statistics  require  a 
'  sympathy  ready-made,  a  moral  sentiment 
1  already  in  activity ;  but  a  picture  of  human 
1  life  such  as  a  great  artist  can  give  surprises 
'  even  the  trivial  and  the  selfish  into  that 
c  attention  to  what  is  apart  from  themselves, 
(  which  may  be  called  the  raw  material  of 


'ESSAYS'  37 

f  moral  sentiment.  When  Scott  takes  us  into 
'  Luckie  Mucklebackit's  cottage,  or  tells  the 
f  story  of  The  Two  Drovers, — when  Words- 
'  worth  sings  to  us  the  reverie  of  Poor  Susan, — 
'  when  Kingsley  shows  us  Alton  Locke  gazing 
'  yearningly  over  the  gate  which  leads  from 
'  the  highway  into  the  first  wood  he  ever  saw, 
'  — when  Hornung  paints  a  group  of  chimney- 
(  sweepers, — more  is  done  towards  linking  the 
f  higher  classes  with  the  lower,  towards  ob- 
'  literating  the  vulgarity  of  exclusiveness,  than 
1  by  hundreds  of  sermons  and  philosophical 
'  dissertations.  Art  is  the  nearest  thing  to 
1  life ;  it  is  a  mode  of  amplifying  experience 
'  and  extending  our  contact  with  our  fellow- 
'  men  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  personal  lot. 
'  All  the  more  sacred  is  the  task  of  the  artist 
'  when  he  undertakes  to  paint  the  life  of  the 
'  People.  Falsification  here  is  far  more  per- 
'  nicious  than  in  the  more  artificial  aspects  of 
'  life.  It  is  not  so  very  serious  that  we  should 
'  have  false  ideas  about  evanescent  fashions 
f  — about  the  manners  and  conversations  of 
'  beaux  and  duchesses ;  but  it  is  serious  that 
'  our  sympathy  with  the  perennial  joys  and 
(  struggles,  the  toil,  the  tragedy,  and  the 
'  humour  in  the  life  of  our  more  heavily  laden 
'  fellow-men,  should  be  perverted,  and  turned 
(  towards  a  false  object  instead  of  the  true  one. 
'  This  perversion  is  not  the  less  fatal  because 


38  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  the  misrepresentation  which  gives  rise  to  it 
'  has  what  the  artist  considers  a  moral  end. 
'  The  thing  for  mankind  to  know  is,  not  what 
'  are  the  motives  and  influences  which  the 
'  moralist  thinks  ought  to  act  on  the  labourer 
'  or  the  artisan,  but  what  are  the  motives  and 

•  influences  which  do  act  on  him.     We  want 

•  to  be  taught  to  feel,  not  for  the  heroic  artisan 
'  or   the   sentimental    peasant,   but    for    the 
'  peasant  in  all   his   coarse   apathy,  and  the 

•  artisan  in  all  his  suspicious  selfishness.     We 
'  have  one  great  novelist  who  is  gifted  with 
'  the  utmost  power  of  rendering  the  external 
'  traits   of   our   town   population ;    and  if  he 
'  could  give  us  their  psychological  character — 
f  their  conceptions  of  life,  and  their  emotions 
•'  — with  the  same  truth  as  their  idiom  and 
f  manners,  his  books  would  be  the  greatest 
<  contribution    Art    has    ever    made    to   the 
'  awakening  of  social  sympathies.     But  while 

•  he  can  copy  Mrs.  Flemish's  colloquial  style 
:  with  the  delicate  accuracy  of  a  sun-picture, 

•  while  there  is  the  same  startling  inspiration 
'  in  his  description  of  the  gestures  and  phrases 
'  of  "  Boots,"  as  in  the  speeches  of  Shake- 
'  speare's  mobs  or  numskulls,  he  scarcely  ever 
'  passes  from  the  humorous  and  external  to 
'  the  emotional  and  tragic,  without  becoming 
'  as  transcendent  in  his  unreality  as  he  was  a 
'  moment  before  in  his  artistic  truthfulness. 


'ESSAYS'  39 

'  But  for  the  precious  salt  of  his  humour, 
'  which  compels  him  to  reproduce  external 
'  traits  that  serve,  in  some  degree,  as  a  cor- 
'  rective  to  his  frequently  false  psychology,  his 
'  preternaturally  virtuous  poor  children  and 
( artisans,  his  melodramatic  boatmen  and 
'  courtesans,  would  be  as  noxious  as  Eugene 
'  Sue's  idealised  proletaires  in  encouraging  the 
'  miserable  fallacy  that  high  morality  and  re- 
(  fined  sentiment  can  grow  out  of  harsh  social 
e  relations,  ignorance,  and  want ;  or  that  the 
1  working  classes  are  in  a  condition  to  enter 
f  at  once  into  a  millennial  state  of  altruism, 
(  wherein  every  one  is  caring  for  every  one 
'  else,  and  no  one  for  himself.' 

The  frequent  reference  to  psychology  in 
this  passage  is  significant,  and  indicates  the 
dangerous  tendency  in  George  Eliot's  own  art 
which  led  to  the  psychological  strain  in  Middle- 
march  and  Daniel  Deronda,  and  finally  resulted 
in  the  psychological  scarecrows  of  Theo- 
phrastus  Such.  To  the  novelist  fthe  curtain 
is  the  picture/  and  if  he  turns  to  the  psycho- 
logist to  analyse  the  painting,  only  the  canvas 
and  frame  remain  intact.  There  is  too  great 
a  tendency  for  the  psychological  novelist  to 
regard  his  characters  as  so  many  corpora  vilia 
for  his  scientific  theories.  Luckily  for  George 
Eliot  her  interests  were  ethical  rather  than 
psychological,  and  if  she  ever  does  violence  to 


40  GEORGE  ELIOT 

art,  it  is  in  the  interest  of  morality  rather  than 
of  science. 

And  this  leads  us  to  discuss  for  a  moment 
the  need  of  culture  for  the  novelist.  Obviously 
intellectual  training  is  not  alone  sufficient. 
George  Henry  Lewes  was  exactly  on  a  par 
with  George  Eliot  in  this  regard,  yet  his 
Ranthorpe  was  deservedly  a  failure.  Nor  is 
culture  combined  with  observation  a  complete 
equipment  for  the  novelist.  Riehl  is  allowed 
by  George  Eliot  herself  to  have  had  a  com- 
plete knowledge  of  the  German  peasant,  and 
was  besides  a  man  of  great  culture ;  yet  his 
Culturgeschichtliche  Novellen,  though  republished 
by  the  Pitt  Press,  can  scarcely  rank  as  classic. 
On  the  other  hand,  Auerbach  and  George 
Eliot  show  that  wide  culture  is  no  necessary 
bar  to  sympathetic  delineation  of  the  life 
furthest  removed  from  culture.  In  so  far  as 
culture  is  real  and  has  become  instinctive  and 
unconscious,  it  undoubtedly  tends  to  give  a 
wider  background  to  the  artistic  picture  and 
to  affect  us  at  more  various  points  of  contact. 
But  observation,  psychology,  and  culture  can 
only  increase  the  artistic  value  of  the  novel  in 
so  far  as  they  are  unconsciously  applied  and 
subordinated  to  the  interest  of  character  and 
incident.  The  selective  principle  with  re- 
gard to  the  latter  cannot  be  of  an  intellectual, 
conscious  kind  at  all :  it  must  clearly  be 


'  ESSAYS'  41 

of  an  emotional  nature  akin  to  the  moral 
faculty. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  we  touch  the  secret 
spring  of  George  Eliot's  art :  her  whole  work 
is  imbued  with  ethical  notions.  The  novel  is, 
no  less  than  the  poem,  a  criticism  of  life ;  and 
the  remarkable  influence  of  George  Eliot's 
novels  has  been  mainly  due  to  the  consistent 
application  of  moral  ideas  to  the  problems  set 
by  each  novel.  Their  stimulative  effect  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  her  ethical  views  were  in 
consonance  with  some  of  the  most  advanced 
ideas  of  the  age.  The  three  chief  principles 
which  dominated  her  thinking  were  the  reign 
of  law  in  human  affairs,  the  solidarity  of 
society,  and  the  constitution  of  society  as 
incarnate  history  (the  phrase  is  Riehl's). 
Flowing  from  these  were  the  ethical  laws 
which  rule  the  world  of  her  novels,  the 
principle  summed  up  in  Novalis's  words, 
(  Character  is  Fate,'  the  radiation  of  good 
and  evil  deeds  throughout  society,  and  the 
supreme  claims  of  family  or  race.  Add  to 
these  the  scientific  tone  of  impartiality,  with 
its  moral  analogue,  the  extension  of  sympathy 
to  all,  and  we  have  exhausted  the  idees  meres 
of  George  Eliot's  ethical  system,  which  differ- 
entiates her  novels  from  all  others  of  the  age. 

These  general  remarks  on  George  Eliot's 
art  have  been  suggested  by  the  essay  on 


42  GEORGE  ELIOT 

Riehl's  studies  of  the  natural  history  of 
German  life,  in  which  the  author  gives  at 
once  her  theory  of  the  function  of  the 
novelist  and  her  general  agreement  with 
Riehl  on  the  psychology  of  the  peasants  who 
were  to  form  the  main  subjects  of  her  novels. 
Other  essays  in  this  volume  are  similarly 
interesting,,  owing  to  the  light  they  throw  on 
her  religious  views.  Two  of  them — on  the 
poet  Young  and  on  Dr.  Gumming — deal  with 
the  chief  moral  defects  she  had  found  in  the 
religion  in  which  she  had  been  brought  up. 
In  the  former  she  deals  with  the  Divine 
Policeman  theory  of  virtue,  which  was  so 
favoured  by  Voltaire  and  was  the  chief  argu- 
ment formerly  used  to  defend  the  immortality 
of  the  soul.  It  is  impossible  to  mistake  the 
personal  tone  of  the  following  protest  against 
this  theory  : — 

( We  can  imagine  the  man  who  ' '  denies  his 
1  soul  immortal "  replying,  "  It  is  quite  possible 
'  that  you  would  be  a  knave,  and  love  yourself 
'  alone,  if  it  were  not  for  your  belief  in  immor- 
f  tality ;  but  you  are  not  to  force  upon  me 
'  what  would  result  from  your  own  utter  want 
'  of  moral  emotion.  I  am  just  and  honest,  not 
'  because  I  expect  to  live  in  another  world, 
'  but  because,  having  felt  the  pain  of  injustice 
'  and  dishonesty  towards  myself,  I  have  a 
'  fellow-feeling  with  other  men,  who  would 
f  suffer  the  same  pain  if  I  were  unjust  or  dis- 


<  ESSAYS'  48 

'  honest  towards  them.  Why  should  I  give 
1  my  neighbour  short  weight  in  this  world, 
'  because  there  is  not  another  world  in  which 
'  I  should  have  nothing  to  weigh  out  to  him  ? 
'  I  am  honest  because  I  don't  like  to  inflict 
e  evil  on  others  in  this  life,  not  because  I  'm 
'  afraid  of  evil  to  myself  in  another.  The  fact 
'  is,  I  do  not  love  myself  alone,  whatever  logi- 
'  cal  necessity  there  may  be  for  that  conclusion 
'  in  your  mind.  I  have  a  tender  love  for  my 
'  wife,  and  children,  and  friends,  and  through 
e  that  love  I  sympathise  with  like  affections  in 
'  other  men.  It  is  a  pang  to  me  to  witness 
'  the  suffering  of  a  fellow-being,  and  I  feel  his 
'  suffering  the  more  acutely  because  he  is 
{  mortal — because  his  life  is  so  short,  and  I 
'  would  have  it,  if  possible,  filled  with  happi- 
'  ness  and  not  misery.  Through  my  union 
'  and  fellowship  with  the  men  and  women  I 
'  have  seen,  I  feel  a  like,  though  a  fainter, 
'  sympathy  with  those  I  have  not  seen  ;  and  I 
'  am  able  so  to  live  in  imagination  with  the 
'  generations  to  come  that  their  good  is  not 
'  alien  to  me,  and  is  a  stimulus  to  me  to  labour 
'  for  ends  which  may  not  benefit  myself,  but 
'  will  benefit  them.  It  is  possible  that  you 
'  might  prefer  to  '  live  the  brute/  to  sell 
'  your  country,  or  to  slay  your  father,  if 
*  you  were  not  afraid  of  some  disagreeable 
'  consequences  from  the  criminal  laws  of 
'  another  world ;  but  even  if  I  could  con- 


44  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  ceive  no  motive  but  by  my  own  worldly 
'  interest  or  the  gratification  of  my  animal 
'  desires,  I  have  not  observed  that  beastliness, 
'  treachery,  and  parricide  are  the  direct  way 
*  to  happiness  and  comfort  on  earth."  ' 

Again,  in  the  scathing  review  of  Dr.  Cam- 
ming's  sermons,  George  Eliot  protests  with 
equal  energy  against  the  older  Evangelical 
teaching  that  all  virtue  is  useless  unless  done 
ad  majorem  Dei  gloriam  (p.  192).  We  thus  see 
that  it  was  disagreement  with  the  ethical 
foundations  of  the  current  theology  of  her 
time  which  caused  her  revolt  from  it.  Again, 
the  chief  interest  of  a  somewhat  unsym- 
pathetic review  of  Mr.  Lecky's  History  of 
Rationalism  consists  in  a  passage  at  the  end,  in 
which  she  calls  attention  to  'the  supremely 
important  fact'  that  science  had  brought 
about  a  conception  of  the  orderly  action  of 
law  on  human  nature,  a  conception  which,  as 
has  been  seen,  dominated  her  whole  thought. 

The  only  paper  of  purely  literary  interest 
in  this  volume  is  one  on  Heine,  which  is  for 
the  most  part  made  up  of  translations  of  auto- 
biographic fragments.  It  contains,  indeed,  an 
elaborate  contrast  of  wit  and  humour,  which 
is  hardly  more  successful  than  the  many  other 
attempts  in  the  same  direction,  and  an  antithe- 
sis of  French  wit  and  German  humour,  which 
is  merely  an  expansion  of  a  popular  prejudice. 


'ESSAYS'  46 

One  fine  illustration  redeems  the  essay,  how- 
ever ;  George  Eliot  gives  as  a  specimen  of  a 
Heinesque  lyric  Wordsworth's  She  dwelt  among 
the  untrodden  ways,  the  last  line  of  which  is 
exactly  in  the  manner  of  Heine.  For  the  rest 
one  is  surprised  at  the  very  ordinary  and  ex- 
ternal character  of  her  criticism.  Her  mind 
was  clearly  constructive,  not  critical,  and  it  is 
a  fundamental  error  to  suppose  that  her  genius 
was  analytical. 

An  Address  to  Working  Men,  by  Felix  Holt, 
and  an  account  of  a  three-months'  stay  at 
Weimar  complete  the  essays.  The  former  re- 
peats at  some  length  the  political  harangues 
in  the  novel.  When  Mr.  Lowe  said,  '  Come, 
let  us  educate  our  new  masters,'  George  Eliot, 
in  the  character  of  a  working  man,  said, 
'  Come,  let  us  educate  ourselves.'  Her  in- 
tensely conservative  feeling  comes  out  strongly 
in  her  appeals  for  the  preservation  of  social 
order;  the  notion  that  society  is  incamate 
history  was  sufficient  to  condemn  with  her 
any  sudden  alteration  in  social  relations.  The 
chief  point  of  practical  advice  in  the  address 
is,  however,  the  recognition  of  the  need  of 
culture  and  opportunities  for  culture  by  the 
masses.  Of  the  account  of  Weimar  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  that  it  might  have  been  written 
by  any  English  lady  of  education. 

Attached  to  these  essays  are  a  few  Leaves 
f      ^ 
TTNIV 


46  GEORGE  ELIOT 

from  a  Note-Book  that  might  very  well  have 
been  omitted.  They  are  of  the  period  and 
the  type  of  Theophrastus  Such,  and  their  style 
is  of  the  same  harsh  character,  as  may  be 
judged  by  the  opening  sentence : — 

*  To  lay  down  in  the  shape  of  practical  moral 
f  rules  courses  of  conduct  only  to  be  made  real 
'  by  the  rarest  states  of  motive  and  disposi- 
c  tion,  tends  not  to  elevate  but  to  degrade  the 
'  general  standard,  by  turning  that  rare  attain- 
'  ment  from  an  object  of  admiration  into  an 
1  impossible  prescription,  against  which  the 
1  average  nature  first  rebels  and  then  flings 
'  out  ridicule/ 

Of  course  a  mind  of  the  power  of  George 
Eliot's  could  not  have  been  occupied  with 
such  varied  subjects  without  hitting  upon 
some  novel  points  of  view  or  felicitous  phrases. 
Of  the  latter  we  may  pick  out  the  reference 
of  Young's  faults  to  a  '  pedagogic  fallacy/ 
akin  to  Mr.  Ruskin's  'pathetic  fallacy.'  Again, 
the  following  points  are  well  put : — 

'  Virtue,  with  Young,  must  always  squint — 
'  must  never  look  straight  towards  the  im- 
'  mediate  object  of  its  emotion  and  effort. 
'  Thus,  if  a  man  risks  perishing  in  the  snow 
(  himself  rather  than  forsake  a  weaker  com- 
'  rade,  he  must  either  do  this  because  his 
'  hopes  and  fears  are  directed  to  another 
<  world,  or  because  he  desires  to  applaud 


'ESSAYS'  47 

'  himself  afterwards  !  Young,  if  we  may  be- 
'  lieve  him,  would  despise  the  action  as  folly, 
'  unless  it  had  these  motives.  Let  us  hope 
'  he  was  not  so  bad  as  he  pretended  to  be  ! 
'  The  tides  of  the  divine  life  in  man  move 
'  under  the  thickest  ice  of  theory.5 

'  Love  does  not  say,  "  I  ought  to  love  " — 
'  it  loves.  Pity  does  not  say,  "  It  is  right  to 
1  be  pitiful " — it  pities.  Justice  does  not  say, 
(  "I  am  bound  to  be  just" — it  feels  justly. 
'  It  is  only  where  moral  emotion  is  compara- 
'  tively  weak  that  the  contemplation  of  a  rule 
'  or  theory  habitually  mingles  with  its  action ; 
'  and  in  accordance  with  this,  we  think  ex- 
(  perience,  both  in  literature  and  life,  has 
'  shown  that  the  minds  which  are  predomi- 
'  nantly  didactic  are  deficient  in  sympathetic 
'  emotion.  A  man  who  is  perpetually  thinking 
'  in  monitory  apophthegms,  who  has  an  unin- 
*  termittent  flux  of  rebuke,  can  have  little 
e  energy  left  for  simple  feeling.' 

'  The  deepest  curse  of  wrong-doing,  whether 
'  of  the  foolish  or  wicked  sort,  is  that  its 
'  effects  are  difficult  to  be  undone.  I  suppose 
'  there  is  hardly  anything  more  to  be  shud- 
4  dered  at  than  that  part  of  the  history  of 
'  disease  which  shows  how,  when  a  man  in- 
'  jures  his  constitution  by  a  life  of  vicious 
'  excess,  his  children  and  grandchildren  inherit 
'  diseased  bodies  and  minds,  and  how  the 


48  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  effects  of  that  unhappy  inheritance  continue 
'  to  spread  beyond  our  calculation.  This  is 
'  only  one  example  of  the  law  by  which  human 
•'  lives  are  linked  together :  another  example 
'  of  what  we  complain  of  when  we  point  to 
'  our  pauperism,  to  the  brutal  ignorance  of 
'  multitudes  among  our  fellow-countrymen,  to 
1  the  weight  of  taxation  laid  on  us  by  blame- 

•  able  wars,   to  the   wasteful  channels  made 

•  for  the  public  money,  to  the  expense  and 
'  trouble  of  getting  justice,  and  call  these  the 
c  effects  of  bad   rule.     This  is  the  law  that 
'  we  all  bear  the  yoke  of,  the  law  of  no  man's 
'  making,  and  which  no  man  can  undo.' 

But  such  passages  are  few  and  far  between, 
and  the  general  impression  is  left,  how  much 
the  hack-work  of  genius  resembles  that  of 
ordinary  mortals.  And  though  not  all  signs 
of  genius  are  wanting,  these  articles  are 
essentially  unfinished  studies  and  give  no 
foreshadowing  of  the  finished  product.  Their 
interest  is  purely  relative  to  the  light  they 
throw  on  George  Eliot's  mental  develop- 
ment. 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'* 

JHESE  long-expected  volumes 
have  been  compiled  with  great 
tact.  Mr.  Cross  has  aimed  at 
making  them  a  self-revelation 
of  his  wife's  career  and  char- 
acter, and  he  has  been  for  the  most  part 
successful  in  the  discharge  of  this  difficult 
undertaking.  Some  slight  confusion  may  be 
at  times  caused  by  the  uninterrupted  printing 
of  extracts  of  diverse  tone,  date,  and  subject ; 
this  might  have  been  obviated  by  judicious 
' spacing'  between  the  successive  entries. 
There  are  obviously  many  omissions,  and  some 
of  the  materials  already  utilised  in  Miss  Blind's 
little  book  would  have  borne  repetition.  At 
times,  too,  the  reader  may  feel  the  need  of 
comment  or  illustration,  while  the  continental 
descriptions  might  have  been  curtailed.  But, 
these  slight  deductions  made,  the  book  is 
remarkably  satisfactory  in  tone,  and  is  especi- 
ally noteworthy  for  a  rigid  abstinence  from 
anything  that  could  pander  to  mere  curiosity. 

*  George  Eliot s  Life,  as  related  in  her  Letters  and 
Journals.  Arranged  and  edited  by  her  Husband, 
J.  W.  Cross.  3  vols.  (Blackwood  £  Sons.) 

D 


50  GEORGE  ELIOT 

The  novel  method  of  extracts  arranged  in 
order  of  time  tells  the  tale  spontaneously,  and 
George  Eliot  the  woman  stands  forth  revealed 
to  the  world  in  all  the  strength  and  refine- 
ment of  her  intellect,  in  all  the  clinging 
trustfulness  of  her  moral  and  emotional  nature. 
And  as  regards  George  Eliot  the  writer  we 
learn  as  much  as  it  is  needful  to  know  about 
the  motives  and  processes  of  her  art  and  the 
outward  circumstances  of  her  activity  as  author. 
The  interest  of  the  work  naturally  divides 
into  the  personal  and  the  artistic  sides  of  her 
life.  By  a  kind  of  coincidence  these  are 
chiefly  represented  in  the  first  and  third 
volumes  respectively,  while  the  intermediate 
one  is  a  sort  of  glorified  Baedeker,  giving 
George  Eliot's  impressions  of  her  foreign 
travels  between  I860  and  1870.  The  modern 
interest  in  development  causes  us  in  the  first 
instance  to  concentrate  our  attention  on  the 
first  volume,  dealing  with  the  life  up  to  the 
production  of  the  first  book,  Scenes  of  Clerical 
Life,  including  the  difficult  problem  of  her 
relations  with  George  Henry  Lewes.  We  see 
there  a  drama  of  religious  development  which 
is  peculiarly  significant,  a  display  of  intel- 
lectual precocity  and  progress,  and,  above  all, 
a  peculiarly  sensitive  affectionateness,  which 
rules  throughout  the  life  and  forms  its  most 
distinctive  as  well  as  most  novel  feature. 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  51 

The  peculiarity  of  the  religious  development 
which  strikes  one  most  prominently  in  reading 
the  earlier  letters  is  that,  in  advancing  towards 
wider  views  than  her  earlier  Calvinism,  George 
Eliot  still  found  objects  for  the  religious 
emotion  that  moved  her  so  strongly  in  her 
young  days.  She  '  found  religion/  as  the 
ascetics  say,  in  the  later  forms  of  her  belief  as 
in  the  earlier,  and  consecrated  her  life  to  the 
highest  and  the  best  equally  in  the  days  of 
Comtism  and  of  Calvinism.  This  predomi- 
nantly religious  tone  gives  an  emotional  unity 
to  her  life  which  might  be  easily  missed,  but  is 
really  the  key  to  its  various  seeming  fluctua- 
tions. Beginning  with  the  conventional  ex- 
pressions of  self-conscious  humility,  '  Oh  that 
'  I  might  be  made  as  useful  in  my  lowly  and 
1  obscure  station  ! '  (i.  43)  it  is  seen  throughout 
life  in  her  high  ideal  of  her  artistic  mission, 
and  finds  a  final  utterance  in  her  character- 
istic hymn.,  '  O  may  I  join  the  choir  in- 
visible ! '  Even  in  the  first  revulsion  from 
the  old  faith  she  felt  the  connection  between 
that  and  the  new,  as  the  following  passage 
shows : — 

'  For  my  part,  I  wish  to  be  among  the 
f  ranks  of  that  glorious  crusade  that  is  seeking 
'  to  set  Truth's  Holy  Sepulchre  free  from  a 
(  usurped  domination.  We  shall  then  see  her 
'  resurrection  !  Meanwhile,  although  I  cannot 


52  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  rank  among  my  principles  of  action  a  fear  of 
'  vengeance  eternal,  gratitude  for  predestined 
'  salvation,  or  a  revelation  of  future  glories  as 
1  a  reward,,  I  fully  participate  in  the  belief 
c  that  the  only  heaven  here,  or  hereafter,  is 
'  to  be  found  in  conformity  with  the  will  of 
f  the  Supreme ;  a  continual  aiming  at  the  at- 
( tainment  of  the  perfect  ideal ,  the  true  logos 
'  that  dwells  in  the  bosom  of  the  one  Father/ 
And  in  a  very  remarkable  essay  on  conformity 
and  compromise,  written  when  she  was  only 
twenty-three,  the  reason  of  the  connection  is 
fully  grasped  and  explained  : — 

'  Agreement  between  intellects  seems  un- 
'  attainable,  and  we  turn  to  the  truth  of  feeling 
'  as  the  only  universal  bond  of  union.  We 
'  find  that  the  intellectual  errors  which  we 
'  once  fancied  were  a  mere  incrustation  have 
'  grown  into  the  living  body,  and  that  we 
'  cannot  in  the  majority  of  cases  wrench  them 
1  away  without  destroying  vitality.  We  begin 
'  to  find  that  with  individuals,  as  with  nations, 
'  the  only  safe  revolution  is  one  arising  out  of 
'  the  wants  which  their  own  progress  has 
'  generated.  It  is  the  quackery  of  infidelity 
'  to  suppose  that  it  has  a  nostrum  for  all 
'  mankind,  and  to  say  to  all  and  singular, 
'  "  Swallow  my  opinions  and  you  shall  be 
'  whole."  If,  then,  we  are  debarred  by  such 
'  considerations  from  trying  to  reorganise 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  53 

'  opinions,  are  we  to  remain  aloof  from  our 
'  fellow-creatures  on  occasions  when  we  may 
(  fully  sympathise  with  the  feelings  exercised, 
'  although  our  own  have  been  melted  into 
'  another  mould  ?  Ought  we  not  on  every 
'  opportunity  to  seek  to  have  our  feelings  in 
'  harmony,  though  not  in  union,  with  those 
'  who  are  often  richer  in  the  fruits  of  faith, 
(  though  not  in  reason,  than  ourselves  ? ' 

One  thing  is  clear  and  instructive.  The 
transition,  brought  about  in  the  main  by  the 
Hennells,  took  a  grievous  weight  from  off  her 
spirits.  Whereas  before  the  change  we  find 
her  saying,  fl  am  aweary,  aweary — longing 
for  rest/  and  speaking  of  herself  as  '  alone 
in  the  world,'  so  soon  as  the  change  comes, 
'I  can  rejoice,'  she  says,  fin  all  the  joys  of 
humanity';  and  she  soon  speaks  of  the  duty 
of  finding  happiness  and  of  learning  how  to 
be  happy  in  a  most  satisfactory  way.  She  is 
speaking  from  experience  when  in  1847  she 
suggests  as  a  subject  she  should  like  to  work 
out,  'the  superiority  of  the  consolations  of  philo- 
'  sophy  to  those  of  (so-called)  religion.'  It  is 
curious  to  contrast  all  this  with  the  totally 
dissimilar  behaviour  of  Carlyle,  who  became 
the  more  morose  the  more  widely  he  departed 
from  ancestral  faith.  And  there  is  plenty  of 
evidence  in  these  volumes  that  George  Eliot's 
bodily  sufferings  began  as  early  and  were 


54  GEORGE  ELIOT 

probably  as  acute  as  Carlyle's.  Before  she  is 
nineteen  we  hear  of  sick-headaches,  and  these 
follow  any  unusual  exertion  throughout  life. 
Her  gentle  heroism  under  this  infliction  con- 
trasts favourably  with  Carlyle's  apostrophes 
to  gods  and  men  on  the  ills  of  dyspepsia. 

Of  equal  interest  is  it  in  this  first  volume 
to  follow  the  rapid  growth  of  George  Eliot's 
intellectual  power.  Very  few  details  are 
given  here  of  the  actual  character  of  her 
studies  in  early  days.  But  here  and  there 
her  thirst  for  knowledge  makes  itself  seen 
even  in  the  days  of  Calvinistic  strictness.  At 
times  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  artistic  pre- 
paration. A  world  of  her  own  creation  is 
referred  to  opprobriously,  and  her  imagination 
is  her  enemy  in  the  days  when  all  fiction  was 
pernicious,  as  is  stated  in  one  of  the  first 
letters  to  Miss  Lewis — an  amusing  bit  of  irony, 
in  the  old  Greek  sense.  Very  soon  the  ten- 
dency to  scientific  illustration  comes,  and  the 
following  passage  shows  the  power  of  descrip- 
tion as  early  as  1841  : — 

'  The  birds  are  consulting  about  their  migra- 
'  tions,  the  trees  are  putting  on  the  hectic  or 
'  the  pallid  hues  of  decay,  and  begin  to  strew 
'  the  ground,  that  one's  very  footsteps  may 
'  not  disturb  the  repose  of  earth  and  air, 
(  while  they  give  us  a  scent  that  is  a  perfect 
'  anodyne  to  the  restless  spirit.' 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  55 

And  somewhat  later  there  is  a  fine  passage 
descriptive  of  fireworks  seen  on  the  Lake  of 
Geneva,  with  'the  pale  moon  looking  at  it 
all  with  a  sort  of  grave  surprise.'  We  may 
notice  the  strain  of  ethical  reflection  so  char- 
acteristic of  the  novels  in  the  recognition  of 
the  purgative  effect  of  war,  in  the.  maxim, 
'  Live  and  teach/  proposed  as  a  substitute  for 
the  proverbial  'Live  and  learn/  in  her  esti- 
mate of  trouble  as  being  a  deepened  gaze  into 
life.  Among  the  chief  intellectual  influences 
before  her  father's  death  in  1849,  which  formed 
the  first  great  crisis  in  her  life,  we  can  trace 
George  Sand,  Carlyle,  Rousseau,  and  Spinoza, 
and,  above  all,  the  converse  with  the  Hennells 
and  the  work  at  Strauss  which  resulted  from 
this.  But  perhaps  the  chief  impression  of 
power  is  left  by  a  few  brief  but  weighty 
remarks  on  the  men  she  came  in  contact 
with,  even  before  she  left  the  provincial  circles. 
George  Dawson  she  estimates  at  once  as  '  not 
a  great  man/  whereas  Emerson  is  appreciated 
as  the  first  man  she  had  known.  The  same 
with  men  known  through  their  writings. 
Disraeli  has  fgood  veins,  as  Bacon  would 
say,  but  there  is  not  enough  blood  in  them.' 
Hannah  More  was  that  most  disagreeable  of 
all  monsters,  a  blue-stocking.  Somewhat  later, 
when  on  the  Westminster  staff,  she  rated  J.  S. 
Mill  at  something  more  nearly  his  true  value 


56  GEORGE  ELIOT 

than  most  of  her  contemporaries,  and  was 
among  the  first  to  welcome  the  promise  of 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  Of  all  the  chief  gifts 
of  intellect  displayed  in  her  works  we  find 
adumbrations  before  she  left  Coventry.  We 
miss.,  however,  every  indication  of  wit  or 
humour  till  the  life  of  the  capitals  is  reached 
in  Geneva  and  London.  The  spirit  of  ob- 
servation becomes  self-conscious,,  and  Lewes 
is  hit  off  as  a  (  sort  of  miniature  Mirabeau/ 
Alboni  as  '  a  very  fat  siren/  Combe  as  '  an 
apostle  with  a  front  and  back  drawing-room/ 
Leroux  '  disagrees  with  all  but  Pierre  Leroux.' 
In  short,  we  have  all  the  indications  of  George 
Eliot  the  novel-writer  except  the  novels.  And 
even  about  these  there  is  a  remarkable  quota- 
tion from  a  letter  of  Mrs.  Bray  to  her  sister 
on  September  25th,  1846,  exactly  ten  years 
before  Amos  Barton :  f  Miss  Evans  looks  very 
'  brilliant  just  now.  We  fancy  she  must  be 
'  writing  her  novel.'  Yet  this  must  have  only 
been  an  Ahnung — as  Mr.  Cross  is  fond  of  saying 
— for  no  people  were  more  surprised  at  the 
revelation  of  George  Eliot's  abilities  as  a 
novelist  than  the  Brays  a  dozen  years  after. 

Her  relation  to  the  Brays  is  in  many  re- 
spects decisive  and  typical.  We  come  to  the 
secret  recesses  of  her  being,  to  the  key  of  all 
that  is  problematic  in  her  career  and  character, 
when  we  encounter  the  remarkable  union  of 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  57 

hard-headed  intellect  and  impetuous  affection, 
such  as  we  see  in  her  letters  to  the  Brays. 
Nor  does  this  die  away  with  youth :  the  same 
gushing  tone — there  is  no  other  word  for  it — 
is  kept  up  with  Miss  Hennell  to  the  last,  and 
is  even  adopted  with  friends  gained  in  the 
decline  of  life.  This  stern  independence  of 
intellect  combined  with  a  complete  depend- 
ence on  others  for  the  emotional  life,  gives 
the  characteristic  tone  throughout  her  life, 
and  we  are  continually  coming  across  a  severe 
philosophical  disquisition  side  by  side  with  an 
outburst  of  uncontrollable  affection  or  longing. 
She  has  doubtless  portrayed  this  side  of  her 
nature  in  Maggie  Tulliver  with  her  impulsive 
affection,  her  emotional  dependence  on  others. 
But  she  had  recognised  it  much  earlier  when 
speaking  of  herself  as  '  ivy-like  as  I  am  by 
nature,'  and  in  this  peculiarly  womanly 
quality  she  remained  a  very  woman  to  the  last. 
Manly  intellect  and  girlish  heart  were  united 
in  her  to  an  unusual  degree. 

This  problematic  nature  serves  to  explain 
— so  far  as  it  bears  explanation — the  crux  of 
her  life — her  union  with  George  Henry  Lewes. 
Mr.  Cross,  with  much  tact  and  wisdom,  refuses 
to  discuss  the  question.  The  only  contribu- 
tion he  gives  to  its  solution  is  a  letter  addressed 
to  Mrs.  Bray  a  year  after  the  ' union'  was 
entered  upon.  Here  the  question  is  made 


58  GEORGE  ELIOT 

to  turn  on  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 
marriage  laws,  and  George  Eliot's  only  defence, 
if  any,  is  that  she  has  not  entered  on  '  light 
and  easily  broken  ties.'  But  as  a  matter  of 
fact  she  would  have  herself  owned  that  this 
was  no  defence  against  setting  herself  at 
variance  with  the  moral  instincts  of  ail  whom 
she  held  dear.  It  is  true  that  six  years  before 
she  had  said,  a  propos  of  Jane  Eyre  : — 

'All  self-sacrifice  is  good,  but  one  would 
*  like  it  to  be  in  a  somewhat  nobler  cause 
(  than  that  of  a  diabolical  law  which  chains  a 
'  man  soul  and  body  to  a  putrefying  carcass/ 

But  that  would  be  at  best  an  excuse  for 
Lewes,  not  for  herself.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
there  was  no  excuse,  and  in  a  very  significant 
letter  to  Mrs.  Taylor  she  practically  surrenders 
any  pleas  as  regards  the  iniquity  of  the  mar- 
riage laws,  and  desires  the  legal  title  she 
should  theoretically  have  despised  : — 

'  For  the  last  six  years  I  have  ceased  to 
f  be  {f  Miss  Evans "  for  any  one  who  has 
'  personal  relations  with  me  —  having  held 
'  myself  under  all  the  responsibilities  of  a 
'  married  woman.  I  wish  this  to  be  distinctly 
'  understood ;  and  when  I  tell  you  that  we 
'  have  a  great  boy  of  eighteen  at  home  who 
'  calls  me  "mother,"  as  well  as  two  other 
'  boys,  almost  as  tall,  who  write  to  me  under 
f  the  same  name,  you  will  understand  that  the 


CROSS'S  '  LIFE '  59 

'  point  is  not  one  of  mere  egoism  or  personal 
'  dignity,  when  I  request  that  any  one  who 
'  has  a  regard  for  me  will  cease  to  speak  of 
f  me  by  my  maiden  name.' 

In  reality,  however,  the  clue  to  her  conduct 
is  to  be  sought  in  the  girlish  impulsiveness  of 
her  affectionate  nature,  which  seems  so  hard 
to  connect  with  her  accuracy  and  independence 
of  thought.  She  speaks  of  Lewes  having 
s  quite  won  my  liking  in  spite  of  myself '  a 
year  before  their  flight,  and  her  hurried  letter 
to  the  Brays  at  the  last  moment  shows  that 
the  momentous  decision  was  the  work  of  im- 
pulse. She  had  evidently  found  in  him  some 
one  to  cling  to  amid  the  dreary  solitude  of 
life  in  London  lodgings,  and  Lewes  took  the 
responsibility  of  accepting  her  sacrifice. 

In  justice  to  Lewes  it  must  be  remembered 
that  he  could  have  had  no  idea  of  the  trans- 
cendent nature  of  the  woman  whose  life  he 
was  accepting.  Mr.  F.  W.  Myers  tells  a  story 
of  some  impudent  ass  who  wrote  to  George 
Eliot  after  Middlemarch  condoling  with  her 
for  being  mated  to  a  Casaubon.  There  would 
have  been  less  incongruity  if  Lewes  had  been 
compared  to  Ladislaw,  who  was,  one  feels, 
almost  equally  unworthy  of  Dorothea.  Lewes 
is  gradually  being  rated  at  his  true  worth :  a 
philosopher  among  journalists,  a  journalist 
among  philosophers,  he  has  left  behind  him 


60  GEORGE  ELIOT 

nothing  that  will  live,  not  even  the  overrated 
Life  of  Goethe,  the  critical  portions  of  which 
are  very  thin.  But  George  Eliot  was  herself 
one  of  the  first  to  protest  against  the  habit 
of  mind  which  requires  equality  of  gifts 
in  husband  and  wife,  and  we  cannot  hope 
that  every  Elizabeth  Barrett  will  find  her 
Robert  Browning. 

And  it  must  be  owned  that,  once  the  lapse 
committed,  Lewes  did  all  in  his  power  to  keep 
at  a  distance  every  bad  influence  He  en- 
couraged her  first  writing,  and  checked  by 
his  vivacity  the  tendency  to  over-seriousness 
which  came  to  her  with  the  knowledge  of  her 
powers  and  responsibilities.  All  the  petty 
details  of  life  were  warded  off  from  her  by 
Lewes  with  watchful  care.  The  somewhat 
unreasoning  sensibility  to  adverse  criticism 
was  carefully  considered  by  Lewes,  who  acted 
as  her  private  secretary.  And  all  this  was 
effected  through  long  years  often  filled  with 
illness  of  his  own.  He  may  have  encouraged 
in  later  years  the  psychological  strain  of  her 
work  to  its  detriment,  and  whatever  glimpses 
we  have  of  his  critical  influence  in  early  years 
seem  by  no  means  fortunate :  it  was  through 
him,  e.g.,  that  Dinah  was  made  to  marry  Adam 
Bede. 

And,  above  all,  the  lapse  must  be  forgiven 
or  forgotten  which  led  to  that  fusion  of  the 


CROSS'S  <  LIFE '  61 

intellect  and  the  emotions  necessary  to  the 
artistic  impulse.  Everything  seems  to  show 
that  George  Eliot's  memories  of  her  home 
life  would  have  slumbered  for  ever  but  for 
this  moral  crisis  in  her  own  life,  which  stirred 
her  to  the  depths  of  her  being  and  withdrew 
her  from  the  conventions  of  society.  There 
is  not  the  slightest  indication  throughout  the 
biography,  except  the  chance  shot  of  Mrs. 
Bray  mentioned  above,  which  could  lead  her 
friends  to  imagine  any  other  future  for  George 
Eliot  than  one  similar  to  that  of  her  friend 
Miss  Sara  Hennell.  Her  attitude  of  moral 
defiance  to  the  world  threw  her  back  on  the 
resources  of  her  own  life  and  gave  birth  to  the 
peculiarities  of  her  art.  What  those  peculi- 
arities are,  and  the  light  thrown  upon  them 
by  the  book  before  us,  must  now  demand 
our  attention. 

The  problem  of  George  Eliot's  life  is  to 
explain  how  a  mind  of  so  eminently  a  specu- 
lative turn  should  have  shown  the  artistic 
impulse  for  creation  so  late  in  life  and  should 
have  succeeded  so  eminently.  The  charac- 
teristics of  her  art  show  us  the  reverse  of  this 
difficulty.  We  have  to  reconcile  her  distinct 
power  of  realising  her  characters  with  her 
equally  marked  capacity  for  what  we  may 
term  moralising  them.  A  well-known  ex- 
ample will  illustrate  the  union,  in  this  case 


62  GEORGE  ELIOT 

the  fusion,  of  the  two  modes  of  work.  In 
the  catastrophe  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  the 
novelist  describes  the  mass  of  broken  timber 
bearing  down  upon  the  brother  and  sister 
(physicists  say  the  boat  would  always  keep 
ahead).  Tom  sees  it,  cries,  flt  is  coming, 
Maggie  ! '  clasps  her,  and  they  meet  their  fate. 
For  the  artist  who  only  wished  to  realise  the 
scene  this  would  suffice.  But  with  George 
Eliot  there  is  the  equal  need  to  '  moralise '  it, 
and  so  she  continues :  '  The  boat  reappeared 
c  — but  brother  and  sister  had  gone  down  in  an 
'  embrace  never  to  be  parted :  living  through 
'  again  in  one  supreme  moment  the  days  when 
'  they  had  clasped  their  little  hands  in  love  and 
'  roamed  the  daisied  fields  together.'  The 
beauty  of  this  passage  must  not  blind  us  to 
its  inartistic,  or  rather  extra-artistic,  character. 
The  emotions,  aesthetic  or  moral,  which  the 
artist  desired  to  produce  by  this  reference  to 
childhood's  days  ought  to  have  been  produced 
spontaneously  by  the  catastrophe  itself  if  the 
previous  presentation  of  their  childhood  had 
been  artistically  effective.  But  it  is  George 
Eliot's  peculiarity  that  she  tries  to  bring  into 
consciousness  those  feelings  which  her  narra- 
tive ought  to  have  produced  by  itself.  She 
makes  two  attempts  to  produce  her  effect — 
by  artistic  presentation  and  by  philosophic 
reflection.  By  so  endeavouring  she  practically 


CROSS'S  fLIFE  63 

confesses  the  failure  of  her  art  to  do  its  work 
unaided.  But  much  of  that  failure  consists  in 
the  nature  of  the  work  which  she  wished  to 
do  with  her  novels. 

Before  she  had  written  any  work  of  imagina- 
tion, Lewes  expressed  his  doubts  whether 
she  had  the  power  of  dramatic  presentation, 
though  she  might  have  '  wit,  description,  and 
philosophy/  As  it  turned  out,  she  possessed 
the  power  of  dramatic  presentation  in  a  very 
high  degree ;  the  breakfast  at  which  Arthur 
Donnithorne  did  not  confess  to  Parson  Irwine, 
the  last  meeting  between  Dorothea  and 
Rosamund,  Tulliver's  inscription  in  the  family 
Bible,  the  appearance  of  Silas  Marner  at  the 
Rainbow.  Klesmer's  visit  to  the  Meyricks,  may 
be  instanced  as  examples  of  this.  But  the 
power  of  imaginative  presentation,  though  it 
must  have  always  existed,  came  to  her  late  in 
life.  It  was  most  probably  aroused  by  the 
attitude  of  moral  defiance  toward  the  world 
which  her  relations  to  Lewes  had  brought 
about.  But  there  is  also  evidence  in  these 
volumes  that  the  process  of  artistic  assimila- 
tion was  with  her  unusually  slow,  as  she  re- 
cognised in  an  interesting  letter  to  Madame 
Bodichon : — 

'  I  do  wish  much  to  see  more  of  human  life 
'  — how  can  one  see  enough  in  the  short  years 
'  one  has  to  stay  in  the  world  ?  But  I  meant 


64  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  that  at  present  my  mind  works  with  the 
'  most  freedom  and  the  keenest  sense  of  poetry 
'  in  my  remotest  past,  and  there  are  many  strata 
'  to  be  worked  through  before  I  can  begin  to 
(  use,  artistically,  any  material  I  may  gather  in 
1  the  present.  Curiously  enough,  a  propos  of 
1  your  remark  about  Adam  Bede,  there  is  much 
1  less  "out  of  my  own  life"  in  that  book — i.e. 
'  the  materials  are  much  more  a  combination 
'  from  imperfectly-known  and  widely-sundered 
'  elements  than  the  Clerical  Scenes.' 

But  while  her  imagination  was  thus  ruminat- 
ing, as  it  were,  her  whole  spiritual  life  was 
taken  up  with  an  entirely  different  order  of 
interests.  Beginning  with  that  thirst  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  which  goes  to 
make  the  great  scholar,  it  was  soon  diverted 
into  the  two  chief  channels  of  intellectual  in- 
terest which  characterised  her  age — the  decay 
of  the  older  religious  ideals  and  the  growth 
of  a  scientific  conception  of  the  universe,  in- 
cluding man.  And  with  her  these  two  branches 
of  speculation  were  reconciled  by  her  recogni- 
tion of  the  facts  of  human  emotion  underlying 
both.  The  following  passage  from  an  instruc- 
tive note  on  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  unfortunately 
too  long  to  quote  in  its  entirety,  puts  the  germ 
of  George  Eliot's  reconciliation  of  religion  and 
science : — 

'  There  is  really  no  moral  "  sanction  "  but 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  65 

'  this  inward  impulse.  The  will  of  God  is 
'  the  same  thing  as  the  will  of  other  men,  com- 
'  pelling  us  to  work  and  avoid  what  they  have 
'  seen  to  be  harmful  to  social  existence.  Dis 
'  joined  from  any  perceived  good,  the  divine 
'  will  is  simply  so  much  as  we  have  ascer- 
( tained  of  the  facts  of  existence  which  com- 
'  pel  obedience  at  our  peril/ 

These  facts  which  compel  obedience  are 
declared  to  be  'the  part  which  is  played  in 
'  the  general  human  lot  by  hereditary  condi- 
'  tions  in  the  largest  sense  and  the  fact  that 
'  what  we  call  duty  is  entirely  made  up  of  such 
'  conditions/  The  scientific  conception  of  law 
in  human  nature  was  combined  by  her  with 
the  moral  or  religious  fact  of  duty.  Besides 
this  the  Comtist  view  of  society  as  an  organism 
was  translated  into  the  ethical  consideration  of 
the  radiation  of  good  and  evil  deeds  through- 
out society.  The  moral  progress  of  the  world 
would  depend,  according  to  her,  upon  the 
degree  in  which  men's  minds  were  trained  to 
see  the  consequences  of  their  egoistic  impulses. 
In  an  interesting  correspondence  with  the  Hon. 
Mrs.  Ponsonby,  where  she  sharply  distinguishes 
her  theory  from  the  physical  Positivism  of 
Professor  Tyndall  and  others,  she  clearly 
puts  this  aspiration  :-%• 

e  With  regard  to  the  pains  and  limitations  of 
'  one's  personal  lot,  I  suppose  there  is  not  a 


66  GEORGE  ELIOT 

'  single  man,  or  woman,  who  has  not  more  or  less 
'  need  of  that  stoical  resignation  which  is  often 
'  a  hidden  heroism,  or  who,  in  considering  his 
'  or  her  past  history,  is  not  aware  that  it  has 
'  been  cruelly  affected  by  the  ignorant  or  selfish 

•  action  of  some  fellow-being  in  a  more  or  less 
1  close  relation  of  life.       And   to   my  mind, 
( there  can  be  no  stronger  motive,  than  this 

*  perception,  to  an  energetic   effort  that  the 
'  lives  nearest  to  us  shall  not  suffer  in  a  like 
'  manner  from  tis.' 

It  is  impossible  to  say  with  what  success  she 
would  have  handled  these  views  in  the  con- 
nected exposition  of  a  philosophical  work.  As 
all  the  world  now  knows,  she  chose  to  expound 
them  in  the  form  of  fiction,  and  determined  to 
make  the  novel  what  history  is  said  to  be — 
philosophy  teaching  by  example.  At  first  she 
was  not  conscious  of  any  such  aim.  When  the 
Scenes  were  completed  she  felt  only  '  a  deep 
'  satisfaction  in  having  done  a  piece  of  faithful 
'  work  that  will  perhaps  remain  like  a  primrose 
'  root  in  the  hedgerow  and  gladden  and  chasten 
'  human  hearts  in  years  to  come.'  Nor  is  there 
any  hint  of  conscious  motive  in  Adam  Bede 
and  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  her  two  greatest 
works.  But  immediately  after  the  great  suc- 
cess of  Adam  Bede  the  sense  of  her  re- 
sponsibilities settled  upon  her  with  only  too 
heavy  pressure.  She  feels  it  her  (  vocation  to 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  67 

speak  to  one's  fellow-men '  and  make  her  work 
'  an  instrument  of  culture/  And  henceforward 
this  motive  was  conscious  with  her,  and  in  each 
of  her  creations  she  looks  round  for  some  idea 
which  the  fiction  shall  embody.  The  process 
begins  with  Silas  Marner,  which  grew  from  f  the 
merest  millet-seed  of  thought.'  Of  this  she 
says:  flt  sets — or  is  intended  to  set— in  a 
'  strong  light  the  remedial  influences  of  pure, 
1  natural  human  relations/  And  in  Silas  Marner 
the  balance  between  artistic  creation  and 
philosophic  construction  is  most  evenly  held 
of  all  her  books,  of  which  it  is  in  a  way  the 
quintessence.  Henceforth,  however,  the  phi- 
losophic interest  is  predominant,  and  her  words 
are  intended  more  to  point  a  moral  than  to 
adorn  a  tale.  Romola  has  its  moral  summed 
up  in  the  last  words  of  the  book,  and  in  an 
elaborate  letter  to  Mr.  R.  H.  Hutton  she  avows 
her  intention  of  expressing  certain  truths 
by  the  relations  of  Baldo  and  Baldassare,  of 
Tito  and  his  patrons,  and  seems  to  be  chiefly 
interested  in  Romola  herself  as  presenting  a 
moral  problem.  The  elaborate  note  on  The 
Spanish  Gypsy  before  referred  to  gives  the  motif 
of  the  work  as  the  clashing  of  individual  desires 
and  hereditary  claims.  Middlemarch,  as  its 
Proem  states,  is  a  contribution  towards  the 
woman  question,  though  its  scale  happily 
caused  it  to  overflow  into  a  study  of  provincial 


68  GEORGE  ELIOT 

life.  Deronda  was  intended  to  ennoble  Judaism 
in  the  estimation  of  Christians  and  of  Jews, 
and  it  would  almost  seem  from  a  letter  to  Pro- 
fessor Kaufmann,  couched  in  extravagant  terms, 
that  the  only  object  in  introducing  Grandcourt 
and  Gwendolen  was  to  contrast  Christian 
society  with  Jewish  family  life,  to  the  dis- 
advantage of  the  former.  In  all  these  later 
works  the  novel  in  George  Eliot's  hand  had 
become  the  Tendenz-roman,  not  alone  the 
philosophic  novel,  as  Mr.  Shorthouse,  for  ex- 
ample,  conceives  it,  but  philosophy  in  the 
form  of  the  novel. 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  discuss  here  the 
artistic  value  of  the  Tendenz-roman.  The 
function  of  criticism  is  to  classify  and  analyse 
much  more  than  to  judge.  Its  artistic  limita- 
tions are  obvious  :  with  the  whole  field  of  life 
before  it,  the  Tendenz-roman  has  to  confine 
itself  to  its  Tendenz.  Its  artistic  value  is 
dependent  in  large  measure  on  its  philosophic 
truth.  The  temptation  to  philosophise  formally 
has  its  dangers,  as  George  Eliot  recognised 
when  she  wrote  to  Mr.  Blackwood  that  she  is 
in  danger  of  refining  where  novel-readers  only 
think  of  skipping.  But  the  point  that  comes 
out  with  most  fulness  in  this  Life  is  the 
high  function  which  such  writing  must  claim 
for  itself,  '  the  high  responsibilities  of  litera- 
ture that  undertakes  to  represent  life.'  The 
following  catena  of  passages  from  the  book 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  69 

before  us  will  show  the  sacredness  which 
attached  to  George  Eliot's  calling  as  she 
viewed  its  functions  : — 

e  My  function  is  that  of  the  aesthetic,  not  the 
'  doctrinal  teacher — the  rousing  of  the  nobler 
f  emotions,  which  make  mankind  desire  the 
'  social  right,  not  the  prescribing  of  special 
c  measures,  concerning  which  the  artistic  mind, 
'  however  strongly  moved  by  social  sympathy, 
f  is  often  not  the  best  judge.  It  is  one  thing 
'  to  feel  keenly  for  one's  fellow-being ;  another 
'  to  say,  "  This  step,  and  this  alone,  will  be  the 
'  best  to  take  for  the  removal  of  particular 
'  calamities." ' 

'  The  things  you  tell  me  are  just  such  as  I 
c  need  to  know — I  mean  about  the  help  my 
'  book  is  to  the  people  who  read  it.  The 
f  weight  of  my  future  life, — the  self-question- 
(  ing  whether  my  nature  will  be  able  to  meet 
'  the  heavy  demands  upon  it,  both  of  personal 
'  duty  and  intellectual  production, — presses 
'  upon  me  almost  continually  in  a  way  that 
'  prevents  me  even  from  tasting  the  quiet  joy 
'  I  might  have  in  the  work  done.' 

f  I  think  aesthetic  teaching  is  the  highest 
'  of  all  teaching,  because  it  deals  with  life  in 
f  its  highest  complexity.  But  if  it  ceases  to 
(  be  purely  aesthetic — if  it  lapses  anywhere 
'  from  the  picture  to  the  diagram — it  becomes 
4  the  most  offensive  of  all  teaching.' 

This  lofty  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  her 


70  GEORGE  ELIOT 

calling  may  in  some  measure  account  for  the 
sensitiveness  which  she  showed  towards  adverse 
criticism.  When  a  writer  is  advocating  a 
doctrine  it  is  natural  that  he  should  be 
disappointed  if  his  views  are  not  even  seen. 
And  certainly  by  couching  her  opinions  in  the 
form  of  novels  George  Eliot  did  her  best  to 
withhold  them  from  all  but  the  most  thoughtful. 
Hence  a  continual  feeling — often  expressed  in 
her  diary — that  her  efforts  had  been  vain,  a 
*  horrible  scepticism  '  as  to  the  effectiveness  of 
her  work.  Lewes  used  to  keep  from  her  all 
critical  notices  except  those  that  were  favour- 
able. The  Athenceum  is  considered  to  have 
given f  the  best  literary  critique '  of  The  Spanish 
Gypsy,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  certain  expres- 
sions in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Charles  Lewes  show  that 
our  review  of  Theophrastus  Such  displeased  her. 
And,  indeed,  as  was  but  natural,  she  got  to 
know  of  most  unfavourable  criticisms,  notwith- 
standing all  her  contempt  for  '  damnatory 
praise  from  ignorant  journalists.'  Her  answers 
to  those  criticisms  are  often  of  interest ;  thus 
she  informs  one  of  her  correspondents  that 
there  is  not  one  thing  put  into  Mr.  Peyser's 
mouth  that  is  due  to  memory.  If  so,  it  is 
curious  that  she  should  make  Parson  Irwine 
say  of  one  of  them  that  it  is  as  good  as  a  fable 
of  jEsop.  So,  too,  we  learn  that  there  is  not 
a  single  portrait  in  Adam  Bede — a  statement 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  71 

that  depends  very  much  on  the  exact  meaning 
to  be  attached  to  the  term  *  portrait.'  This 
excessive  sensibility  is  seen  at  its  maximum 
intensity  in  connection  with  the  imposture 
attempted  by  Mr.  Liggins  of  Nuneaton.  One 
would  have  thought  that  a  woman  possessed 
of  such  powers  of  humour  would  have  been 
more  impressed  by  the  ridiculous  than  by  the 
serious  aspect  of  the  incident.  But  George 
Eliot  returns  again  and  again  to  the  subject 
in  a  tone  of  sincere  annoyance. 

And  finally,  the  predominance  of  the  philo- 
sophic over  the  artistic  spirit  in  George  Eliot 
has  tended  to  make  these  volumes,  containing 
the  record  of  her  private  life,  rather  dull  and — 
dare  we  say  it? — commonplace.  She  was  a 
great  woman,  but  this  is  not  a  great  book. 
Like  all  thinkers,  she  tended  to  weave  a  web 
of  theory  between  herself  and  life,  and  seemed 
to  reserve  all  her  humour  and  liveliness  for 
her  books.  It  is  possible  that  Mr.  Cross  has 
created  this  impression  by  an  ill-judged  ex- 
cision of  anything  that  does  not  display  his 
wife  on  the  stilts  of  philosophy  and  ethics. 
But  as  he  claims  vivacity  as  one  of  her 
prominent  qualities,  it  is  more  likely  that  it 
did  not  display  itself  in  her  letter-writing. 
And  the  tendency  to  abstract  theorising  has 
removed  from  these  volumes  almost  all  personal 
traits  of  the  many  distinguished  men  and 


72  GEORGE  ELIOT 

women  with  whom  George  Eliot  came  in 
contact.  Even  the  personal  details  of  her  own 
life  had,  for  the  most  part,  been  discounted  in 
the  articles  that  appeared  after  her  death. 
What  we  chiefly  notice  are  some  of  her  literary 
opinions  and  prejudices.  Byron  was  the  most 
vulgar-minded  genius  that  ever  lived,  the  Iliad 
is  a  semi- savage  poem,  Pere  Goriot  a  hateful 
book  (i.e.  has  no  Tendenz),  the  Origin  of  Species 
will  not  produce  much  effect  because  ill 
arranged,  but  expresses  the  adhesion  of  a  well- 
known  naturalist  (this  on  the  appearance  of 
the  book).  Before  the  Vie  de  Jesus  she  felt 
more  kinship  with  Renan  than  with  any  other 
contemporary  writer,  but  afterwards  she  gives 
up  her  high  estimate  of  Renan.  At  times  we 
may  see  bits  of  the  novels  in  the  making. 
Overbeck  at  Rome  clearly  suggested  Neumann 
in  Middlemarch,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  seems 
to  have  suggested  the  Legend  of  Jubal  and 
supplied  the  legal  technicalities  of  Felix  Holt. 
We  may  catch  the  origin  of  the  opening  scene 
of  Deronda  in  the  girl  gambler  described  here 
(iii.  171).  A  sensible  letter  to  Mrs.  Beecher 
Stowe  on  spiritualism  may  be  recommended  to 
the  notice  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research. 
Mr.  Cross  has  given  with  admirable  taste  a  few 
Boswellisms.  His  wife  told  him  that  Romola 
found  her  young  and  left  her  old.  The  inter- 
view between  Dorothea  and  Rosamund  was 


CROSS'S  'LIFE'  73 

written  off  in  a  fever  of  excitement,,  and  stands 
now  as  at  first  written.  But  these  items  of 
interest  are  few  and  far  between,  and  the  book 
as  a  whole  might  more  easily  be  the  record  of 
a  savant  than  of  a  literary  artist.  In  every 
way  the  total  impression  is  sad  and  sombre. 
And  so  we  lay  down  these  volumes  with  the 
impression  of  a  life  disfigured  by  one  great 
lapse  that  overshadowed  it  to  the  end,  but 
ennobled  by  high  gifts  devoted  with  self- 
denying  thoroughness  to  a  lofty  conception 
of  the  function  of  the  depicter  of  human 
life.  The  novelist's  art  has  never  been  made 
so  sacramental  as  by  George  Eliot. 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD 

April  15,  1888 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

(HE  terribly  sudden  death  of 
Matthew  Arnold  has  deprived 
England  of  an  intellectual  force 
of  a  high  order.  A  striking 
and  influential  individuality  is 
lost  to  English  thought  and  letters.  Matthew 
Arnold  was  the  poet  and  critic  of  the  age 
of  transition  which  separates  so  widely  the 
England  of  to-day  from  the  England  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  or,  to  come  down  even  later, 
from  the  England  of  the  Great  Exhibition. 
The  changes  in  taste,  in  feeling,  in  the  general 
attitude  towards  the  fundamental  problems  of 
religion,  of  society,  and  of  politics,  have  been 
enormous,  and  in  all  of  them,  except,  perhaps, 
the  last,  Matthew  Arnold  has  been  an  abiding 
influence.  We  shall  never,  perhaps,  fully 
appreciate  the  way  in  which  he  softened  the 
asperities  of  the  conflicts  which  raged  round 
him  by  his  imperturbable  good  humour,  and 
even  by  the  mannerisms  which  diverted  the 
stress  of  feeling.  The  solvent  of  his  criticism 

was  diluted  to  the  exact  strength  where  it 

77 


78  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

could  effect   its  purpose   while   giving  least 
pain. 

He  began  life  as  a  poet,  and  in  a  measure 
remained  one  always,  if  we  can  divorce  the 
poet  from  the  technique  of  his  art.  His  was 
a  poetic  force,  a  uniform  recognition  of  the 
permanent  power  and  reality  of  the  ideal 
element  in  human  character.  His  appeal  was 
always  to  that,  whether  he  were  discussing 
Heine  or  Tolstoi,  Irish  aifairs  or  Board  schools. 
So  far  he  was  a  poetic  force  in  English  thought 
and  affairs.  But  in  things  specifically  poetic 
he  touched  his  readers  less  than  any  other 
Victorian  poet  of  the  first  rank.  Yet  he  is 
among  the  masters,  his  diction  is  unrivalled 
for  purity  and  dignity,  he  strikes  his  notes 
with  no  faltering  hand.  Why  then,  is  he  not 
impressive?  Because  his  problems  and  his 
moods  are  not  poetic  problems  or  poetic 
moods.  Intellectual  doubt  has  found  its 
voice  in  Matthew  Arnold's  most  sincere 
utterances,  and  doubt  can  never  touch  a 
wide  circle.  Obermann  Once  More  or  The 
Scholar  Gypsy  will  answer  to  some  moods  of 
some  men  as  few  poems  answer  to  the  inmost 
depths.  But  the  moods  are  rare  among  men, 
and  the  appeal  of  the  poems  must  be  as  rare. 
Strangely  enough,  while  Matthew  Arnold 
deals  most  powerfully  with  one  aspect  of  the 
inward  conflict,  he  has  been  almost  equally 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  79 

successful  in  the  most  objective  form  of 
poems,  the  heroic  narrative.  When  he  was 
urging  with  all  his  command  of  paradox  that 
the  English  hexameter — the  existence  of 
which  still  remains  to  be  proved — was  the 
best  medium  into  which  to  translate  Homer, 
he  himself  was  giving  in  his  Sohrab  and 
Rustum  the  nearest  analogue  in  English  to 
the  rapidity  of  action,  plainness  of  thought, 
plainness  of  diction,  and  the  nobleness  of 
Homer.  Yet  even  here  we  felt  that  some- 
thing was  wanting,  as  we  feel  in  almost  all 
attempts  at  reproduction  of  the  Romance 
temper:  it  is  not  sincere,  and  cannot,  there- 
fore, be  great.  Where  Matthew  Arnold  is 
sincere  in  his  poetic  work  is  when  he  gives 
expression  to  his  f  yearning  for  the  light/  and 
summons  the  spirit  of  renunciation  to  support 
him  through  the  days  of  gloom. 

These  moods  he  reserved  for  expression  in 
verse.  In  prose  no  one  is  less  gloomy  than 
he.  If  we  might  define  him  as  a  happy 
Heine,  we  should  give  the  best  point  of  view 
from  which  to  survey  his  prose  work,  his 
criticism  of  life  that  underlies  and  involves  all 
his  criticism  of  books,  of  faiths,  and  of  institu- 
tions. Like  the  German  poet,  he  was  armed 
with  all  the  culture  of  his  time — science  does 
not  count  in  such  matters — and  like  him  he 
played  off  the  one  side  of  his  nature  against 


80  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

the  other.  But  the  circumstances  of  his  life 
saved  him  from  the  bitterness  of  Heine, 
while  they  intensified  that  tendency  to  good- 
humoured  tolerance  which  gave  to  his  work 
much  power  in  some  directions  and  robbed  it 
of  much  in  others. 

It  is  usual  to  speak  of  Matthew  Arnold  as 
having  revolutionised  English  criticism,  by 
which  is  usually  meant  book-criticism.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  he  did  very  little  in  the  way  of 
'judging'  books,  and  what  he  did  in  this  way 
was  by  no  means  always  instructive  or  trust- 
worthy. His  celebrated  slip  about  Shelley's 
letters,  the  selections  he  made  from  Byron, 
may  be  recalled  as  instances  of  uncertain  vision 
or  imperfect  appreciation.  In  introducing  the 
methods  of  Sainte-Beuve  into  England,  he 
transferred  the  interest  in  criticism  from  the 
books  to  the  man.  What  he  did  in  criticism 
was  to  introduce  the  causerie,  and  with  it  the 
personal  element.  Instead  of  the  *  we '  of  the 
older  regime,  the  critic,  even  if  he  use  the 
plural  pronoun,  professes  to  give  no  more  than 
the  manner  in  which  a  new  work  strikes  his 
individuality.  If  this  method  has  been  the 
cause  or  occasion  of  much  affectation  in  con- 
temporary criticism,  it  has  raised  criticism  into 
the  sphere  of  literary  art  by  giving  it  the 
personal  element.  The  personality  of  Matthew- 
Arnold  was,  with  all  its  affectations  and 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  81 

mannerisms,  so  attractive  that  a  causerie  with 
him  charmed  not  so  much  by  adding  to  our 
information  about  the  author  or  his  book,  as 
because  it  added  to  our  knowledge  of  Matthew 
Arnold. 

His  criticism  of  books,  we  have  said,  was  a 
criticism  of  life,  and  here  his  work  touched  the 
deepest  problems  of  his  time,  problems  social 
and  problems  theological.  We  all  know  his 
method  of  exposition.  A  view  being  taken,  a 
phrase,  more  or  less  felicitous,  is  selected  to 
express  the  view,  and  henceforth  the  changes 
are  rung  upon  the  phrase  till  the  dullest  of 
readers  cannot  fail  to  grasp  the  particular  view 
which  it  was  desired  to  impress  on  him.  The 
trick  of  iteration,  exasperating  as  it  was, 
effected  its  purpose,  and  the  formulae '  sweet- 
1  ness  and  light,' f  criticism  of  life/  c  barbarians, 
'  Philistines,  and  populace/  f  the  need  of  ex- 
<  pression,  the  need  of  manners,  the  need  of 
'  intellect,  the  need  of  beauty,  and  the  need 
f  of  conduct/  have  bitten  the  more  deeply 
into  the  contemporary  consciousness  because 
they  were  formulae,  and  could  be  easily  re- 
called. This  effect  was  mainly  mechanical; 
not  so  the  discussions  which  led  up  to  them, 
were  summarised  in  them,  or  were  deduced 
from  them.  Therein  Arnold  showed  his 
powers  of  social  analysis,  and  his  powers  were 
great.  His  summary  of  <  needs '  given  above 


82  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

is  a  remarkable  description  of  man  as  a  social 
being.  Again,  the  cultus  of  ( culture/  to 
which  he  gave  the  vogue,  was  in  his  hands 
something  precise.  Civilisation  is  a  big  thing 
to  analyse  or  to  talk  about,  yet  we  felt,  when 
he  was  talking  about  it,  that  it  was  something 
real  and  definite  that  he  was  discussing,  and 
not  the  vague  abstractions  of  the  sophist. 

This  power  of  analysis  showed  itself  in  the 
series  of  theological  studies  beginning  with 
Literature  and  Dogma.  As  regards  his  own 
solution  of  the  religious  problem,  if  solution 
it  can  be  called,  little  need  here  be  said.  His 
very  formula,  purposely  vague  and  indefinite 
as  it  was,  is  its  own  condemnation.  But  it  has 
not  been  sufficiently  recognised  how  the  intro- 
duction of  his  literary  tone,  his  many-sided- 
ness, and  the  gentle  irony  with  which  he 
treated  all  extremes  helped  to  prevent  an 
explosion  of  theological  or  anti-theological 
polemics.  Mr.  Morley  has  recently  been 
confessing  that  the  tone  of  the  Fortnightly 
was  needlessly  aggressive.  But  for  Matthew 
Arnold's  intervention  the  struggle  would  have 
been  a  outrance.  He  brought  into  it  the 
spirit  of  an  '  honest  broker/  and  had  effect 
with  both  parties,  because  each  felt  that  he 
was  in  sympathy  with  its  best  self. 

Yes,  that  is  even  so  with  the  Philistines 
and  the  Nonconformists.  Amid  all  his  wit — or 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  83 

rather  because  his  wit  was  so  mild  and  free 
from  caustic — the  Puritan  part  of  the  nation 
felt  that  he  too  was  on  the  side  of  the  angels. 
He  was  so  respectable,  after  all.  Herein 
comes  the  great  difference  between  him  and 
Heine,  who  was  not  respectable  at  all ;  and 
Renan,  who  always  shows  a  hankering  after 
the  life  of  les  gais.  But  Matthew  Arnold  was 
intensely  sensitive  and  scrupulous  in  this 
regard,  almost  to  the  point  of  Podsnappery. 
Therefore  the  British  public  would  allow  him 
a  hearing  on  the  problems  of  life. 

There  was  no  affectation  in  all  this.  The 
Puritan  in  him  came  near  the  self-restraint  of 
his  father's  Romans,  or  the  artistic  balance  of 
life  which  he  respected  in  the  best  Greeks. 
He  was  too  much  at  ease  in  Zion  to  be  of  the 
stuff  of  which  prophets  are  made,  yet  there 
was  something  in  him  akin  to  the  spirit  of  the 
old  prophets.  Hence  it  was  that  he  was  so 
influential  with  the  Philistines;  he  was  in  a 
measure  of  them,  though  he  saw  their  faults 
and  narrownesses.  Half  humorously  he  re- 
cognised this  in  one  of  his  books,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  of  its  truth  and  of  its 
influence.  Because  he  was  of  them,  the  Philis- 
tines, i.e.  Nonconformists  and  Low  Church- 
men, listened  to  him,  with  the  result  that  the 
Low  Church  is  no  more  ;  and  Nonconformity 
is  Broad  Church. 


84  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

We  have  laid  stress  on  the  theological 
activity  of  Arnold  because  its  importance  is 
apt  to  be  obscured  by  the  fact  that  his  par- 
ticular way  of  putting  his  solution  of  theologi- 
cal difficulties  is  not  likely  to  gain  disciples. 
But  for  all  that,  the  discussions  have  had  as 
much  effect  on  English  theology  as  anything 
of  the  past  quarter  of  a  century,  and  he  him- 
self was  in  the  right  in  laying  stress  upon  his 
theological  activity  and  its  results  as  the  most 
influential  and  most  abiding  part  of  his  work. 

A  word  or  two  may  here  be  added  on  his 
general  attitude  towards  politics.  His  appeal 
for  detachment  from  party  politics  is  part  of 
a  general  tendency  which  seems  to  be  dis- 
severing everywhere  the  thinking  part  of  the 
nations  from  active  share  in  the  politics  of  the 
democracy.  The  formation  of  a  party  of  In- 
dependents, advocated  by  Mr.  Lowell  in  the 
United  States,  is  an  instance  of  what  we  mean. 
By  adopting  this  attitude  Matthew  Arnold 
showed  less  than  his  usual  insight  and  sagacity. 
His  influence  in  this  direction  cannot  be  said 
to  have  been  for  good. 

He  that  is  gone  would  not  have  been  satis- 
fied with  any  estimate  of  his  life-work  which 
did  not  take  account  of  his  strivings  for  educa- 
tional reform,  especially  as  regards  middle- 
class  schools.  In  English  social  arrangements 
he  saw  one  great  blot,  the  separation  of  classes 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  85 

which  could  be  traced  to  school-days,  and  he 
argued,  justly  enough,  that  it  would  never 
cease  till  the  enormous  difference  in  the  tone 
of  boys'  schools  for  the  upper  classes  and  of 
boys'  schools  for  the  middle  classes  was  done 
away  with.  It  cannot  be  said  that  his  insist- 
ence on  this  point  was  effectual,  though  the 
improved  tone  of  schools  for  middle-class  girls 
may  possibly  be  connected  with  it.  But  there 
can  be  little  doubt  of  the  brilliant  suggestive- 
ness  of  many  of  his  interesting  reports  on 
education,  which  we  trust  will  be  now  brought 
together  in  book  form.  Rarely  have  Blue- 
bpoks  been  made  so  enjoyable  as  those  which 
contained  Matthew  Arnold's  racy  comments 
on  things  in  general,  and  school  things  in 
particular. 

He  was  a  poet  throughout,  we  have  said, 
and  he  himself  has  denned  a  poet  as  a  critic 
of  life.  Would  that  all  poets  were  critics  so 
genial !  In  that  respect  the  style  was  the 
man,  and  no  man  was  so  charming  to  his 
intimates  as  Matthew  Arnold.  It  may  be 
suspected  that  when  we  come  to  know  the 
private  lives  of  the  men  of  letters  of  this,  or 
rather  of  the  preceding  generation,  few  will 
leave  so  pleasant  an  impression,  few  will  seem 
so  livable  with  as  he.  That  easy  temper 
which  perhaps  prevented  him  from  giving 
his  message  in  a  more  assured  tone,  or  from 


86  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

giving  a  more  assured  message,  made  him  a 
delightful  companion.  And  a  delightful  com- 
panion he  is,  too,  in  his  books,  with  their  sub- 
acid  egotisms,  their  easy  flow  of  keen-sighted 
analysis;  their  sympathy  with  the  ideal,  and, 
above  all,  that  determination  to  see  things  as 
in  themselves  they  really  are,  which  gives 
the  virile  strength  that  would  otherwise  be 
wanting.  His  books  and  he  have  done  their 
work  so  well  that  they  can  never  appeal  to 
any  later  age  with  so  much  force  as  they  have 
to  this.  But  because  they  have  had  so  direct 
an  appeal  to  this,  they  must  live  as  typical  of 
our  age  and  representative  of  it. 


DISCOURSES  IN  AMERICA'* 

VERY  one  will  welcome  another 
volume  of  causeries  from  the 
hand  of  our  only  English  mas- 
ter in  this  branch  of  literature, 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  Not- 
withstanding the  attempts  of  many  would-be 
imitators,  he  alone  possesses  the  lightness  of 
touch,  width  of  view,  sanity  of  criticism,  and 
individuality  of  style  which  are  needed  to  give 
permanent  value  to  what  seems  at  first  sight 
to  be  merely  a  form  of  the  higher  journalism. 
The  combination  of  these  qualities  is  rare 
enough  to  account  for  the  influence  possessed 
by  the  men  in  whom  they  occur.  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold  in  England,  M.  Renan  and 
M.  Scherer  in  France,  and  Mr.  Lowell  in 
America,  almost  exhaust  the  list;  and  of  all 
the  masters  of  the  causerie  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  is  in  some  respects  the  most  influential 
in  England,  for  reasons  which  may  well  engage 
our  attention  after  we  have  made  a  few  re- 
marks on  the  present  instalment  of  his  work. 

*  Discourses    in    America.     By    Matthew    Arnold. 
(Macmillan  &  Co. ) 

87 


88  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

This  consists  of  only  three  discourses — the 
Rede  Lecture  adapted  to  American  audiences 
and  the  specially  American  lectures  on 
Numbers  and  Emerson.  With  the  aid  of  wide 
margins  and  a  liberal  amount  of  ( fat,'  as  the 
printers  call  it,  the  text  is  doled  out  in  pages 
of  but  nineteen  lines  each,  and  thus  the  three 
articles  are  successfully  expanded  into  a  book- 
let of  over  two  hundred  pages.  Small  as  it  is, 
the  volume  differs  favourably  from  some  of  the 
recent  republications  of  Mr.  Arnold's  utter- 
ances in  that  it  contains  only  specimens  of  his 
best  work,  and  we  may  perhaps  add  that  in 
it  he  dismounts  from  his  over-ridden  hobby — 
State  schools  for  the  middle  classes.  Each  of 
the  three  essays  attracted  attention  when 
first  delivered — readers  will  remember  the 
ludicrous  blunders  made  by  the  American 
reporters  with  the  goddess  Lubricity  in 
Numbers — and  they  were  as  eagerly  read  when 
republished  in  magazines.  Now  collected  in 
a  volume,  they  will  be  as  popular  as  any  in  the 
series  in  which  they  are  published,  and  have  a 
good  chance  of  being  revived  in  the  far  distant 
day  when  their  copyright  shall  have  run  out 
— the  most  practical  test  that  occurs  to  us  to 
determine  whether  a  book  really  belongs  to 
English  literature. 

Much  comment  on  essays  so  much  com- 
mented on  at  the  time  of  their  appearance 


'DISCOURSES  IN  AMERICA*  89 

were  perhaps  needless.  We  may  remark, 
however,  that  the  lecture  on  literature  and 
science  has  lost  somewhat  in  its  passage  across 
the  Atlantic.  There  was  a  peculiar  aptitude 
in  its  delivery  in  the  Senate  House  at  Cam- 
bridge., where  everything  seems  to  be  telling 
for  science  rather  than  literature.  And 
there  was  a  specially  interesting  passage  in 
the  original,  now  omitted,  which  dealt  with 
the  difference  of  the  two  universities — 
Oxford  the  home  of  great  movements,  Cam- 
bridge of  great  men.  On  the  general  merits 
of  the  great  question — literature  or  science  as 
training  for  life — Mr.  Arnold  is  clearly  on  the 
right  side,  and  even  Professor  Huxley  scarcely 
attempts  to  deny  this.  But  it  is  curious  that 
Mr.  Arnold  omits  to  notice  that  there  is  a  side 
of  literary  work  which  tends  to  give  all,  or 
nearly  all,  the  educational  advantages  claimed 
for  science.  A  work  like  Munro's  Lucretius  is 
in  reality  as  scientific  as  Roscoe  and  Schorlem- 
mer's  Chemistry.  In  Germany  both  would  be 
included  under  the  comprehensive  '  Wissen- 
schaft.'  Observation,  induction,  hypothesis, 
verification,  quantitative  analysis,  and  even  to 
some  extent  experiment,  are  all  applicable  to 
Homer  or  the  '  Nibelungenlied '  as  to  the 
triassic  strata.  Indeed,  a  good  case  might  be 
made  out  for  showing  that  Mr.  Arnold,  in  his 
discourse  on  Numbers,  is  simply  applying  the 


90  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

ordinary  scientific  law  of  error — the  principle 
of  deviations  from  an  average  so  admirably 
applied  in  Mr.  Galton's  Hereditary  Genius. 
His  comfortable  doctrine  of  the  remnant  is  in 
reality  based  on  a  similar  assumption,  and 
much  of  it  is  seen  to  be  untrustworthy  when 
one  remembers  that  the  curve  of  error  may 
take  different  forms,  and  the  remnant  be 
smaller  though  the  numbers  be  larger.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  is  it  not  the  universal  ex- 
perience that  the  saving  remnant,  even  in 
America,  is  small  in  proportion  to  the  mass  of 
self-seeking  Philistinism  ?  And  if  we  turn  to 
China  or  India,  the  doctrine  of  the  remnant 
has  very  little  comfort  left  for  us.  Opinions, 
too,  might  differ  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the 
worship  of  the  goddess  Aselgeia  is  corrupting 
French  culture.  The  success  of  a  mediocre 
master  like  M.  Ohnet,  simply  because  he  does 
not  bow  to  the  ruling  goddess,  is  sufficient  to 
show  the  strength  of  the  protest  against  the 
worship  of  Lubricity. 

Here,  probably,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  would 
agree  with  us,  the  only  difference  of  opinion 
being  as  to  the  extent  of  the  evil.  On  this 
it  may  be  remarked  that  it  has  been  long 
existent  without  producing  any  widely  ap- 
parent ill  effects,  and  that  it  is  in  large 
measure  counteracted  by  the  intense  family 
love  of  the  Frenchman  and  the  more  robust 


' DISCOURSES  IN  AMERICA'  91 

life  of  the  provinces.  But  we  prefer  not  to 
parade  differences  where  there  is  so  much 
with  which  we  can  agree  and  from  which  we 
can  learn.  The  analysis  of  the  French  char- 
acter and  its  threefold  strain — Gallic,  Latin, 
and  Germanic — recalls  some  of  the  best 
parts  of  the  Celtic  Literature.  The  admirable 
quotations  from  Newman,  Carlyle,  Goethe, 
and  Emerson,  in  the  opening  passage  of  the 
essay  on  the  last,  together  with  the  remarks 
on  each  author — often  but  a  word,  but  what 
an  instructive  word  ! — exhibit  Mr.  Arnold  at 
one  of  his  best  moments;  as,  indeed,  the  whole 
discourse  on  Emerson  shows  him  to  us  in 
one  of  his  happiest  hours  of  inspiration,  and 
might  be  selected  as  giving  an  admirable 
specimen  of  his  peculiar  qualities  as  a  critic 
of  letters  and  of  life ;  or,  as  Mr.  Arnold  would 
say,  it  gives  us  his  method  and  his  secret. 

There  is  an  apt  phrase — we  believe,  of 
Professor  Huxley's — which  exactly  expresses 
the  differentia  of  Mr.  Arnold's  studies :  they 
are  lay  sermons.  The  object  of  the  sermon 
may  be  assumed  to  be  the  moral  regeneration 
of  the  hearers.  This  is  clearly  and  avowedly 
the  object  of  most  of  Mr.  Arnold's  utterances. 
Notice  how  he  invariably  picks  out  the 
favourite  sin  of  his  audience.  At  the  Royal 
Institution,  in  the  midst  of  the  London 
season,  he  lectures  on  equality.  At  Cam- 


92  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

bridge  he  avers  that  with  the  majority  of 
mankind  a  little  of  mathematics  goes  a  long 
way,  and  that  science  cannot  satisfy  the  soul 
of  man.  He  crosses  to  America,  and  there  he 
chooses  as  his  special  topic  Numbers,  preach- 
ing to  the  text,  '  The  majority  are  bad/  For 
every  one  will  recognise  that  Mr.  Arnold's 
lectures  have  the  note  of  the  sermon  method 
in  this  at  least,  that  they  start  from  a  text — 
it  may  be  from  the  Bible,  it  may  be  from 
Menander — to  which  the  discourse  returns  time 
after  time,  with  a  reiteration  which  some  may 
find  wearisome,  but  which  clearly  effects  the 
purpose  of  impressing  itself  on  the  method. 

His  method,  then,  is  that  of  the  lay  sermon. 
Would  that  clerical  sermons  were  ever  as 
good  !  His  secret  is  his  subacid  reasonableness 
and  his  serious  levity  or  frivolous  seriousness. 
What  strikes  one  in  his  criticisms  of  life  even 
more  than  their  penetration  is  their  sanity  and 
completeness.  Many  a  controversial  victory 
he  has  won  in  discussions  about  letters  or  life, 
or  sometimes  even  in  politics,  by  attending  to 
the  one  question,  What  are  the  actual  and 
complete  facts  of  the  case  ?  He  takes  human 
nature  all  round,  and  sees  how  far  a  proposed 
remedy  answers  to  all  its  needs.  Herein  he 
is  really  penetrated  by  the  scientific  spirit  in 
its  best  aspect,  and  he  has  been  no  insufficient 
teacher  of  the  higher  anthropology.  That  in 


'DISCOURSES  IN  AMERICA'  93 

part  is  the  secret  of  his  influence.  Men  see 
that  what  he  says  tallies  in  the  main  with  what 
they  know,,  and  at  the  same  time  they  are  half 
attracted  half  repelled  by  the  tone  in  which 
he  says  it.  If  we  may  so  put  it,  he  pretends 
not  to  be  serious,  and  by  the  very  pretence 
convinces  one  of  his  seriousness.  It  is,  in 
fact,  this  seriousness,  the  conviction  his 
words  convey  that  his  deepest  concern  is 
with  the  things  of  moral  import,  that  gives 
such  authority  to  his  word  among  Englishmen. 
The  things  of  conduct  are,  after  all,  what  both 
he  and  they  have  most  at  heart,  and  they 
listen  to  him  as  he  discourses  on  things  of 
sweetness  and  light — now,  alas !  becoming 
rarer  and  rarer  with  him — because  they  know 
that  in  his  hands  they  have  intimate  bearing 
on  conduct.  Hence  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  may 
say  things  in  a  tone  which  would  be  censured 
in  another.  There  is  a  passage  in  these  dis- 
courses about  M.  Blowitz  and  the  Eternal 
which,  even  in  Mr.  Arnold,  is  as  near  want  of 
taste  as  it  is  possible  to  go.  But  one  knows 
that  Mr.  Arnold,  after  all,  is  not  really  lacking  * 
in  reverence,  and  so  the  lapse  is  overlooked. 
Reflecting  on  this,  one  cannot  help  thinking 
what  a  force  Mr.  Arnold  would  be  if  he 
dropped  his  cloak  of  levity.  He  has  given  a 
clever  sermon  on  Gray ;  text :  '  He  never  spoke 
out/  One  feels  that  Mr.  Arnold  has  never 


94  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

spoken  out  the  faith  that  is  in  him.  He  began 
life  as  an  Hellene  of  the  Hellenes,  and  was  as 
one  of  those  who  are  at  ease  in  Zion.  He 
has  gradually  become  more  Hebraic  than  the 
Hebrews,  but  yet  retains  the  easy  manner  of 
the  sons  of  light.  What  a  motive  force  he 
might  be  if  he  adapted  his  style  to  his  matter  ! 
Mr.  Arnold  has  some  admirable  words  on 
Carlyle  here  in  the  pages  before  us.  Carlyle 
is  weighed  in  the  balance  and  found  wanting ; 
but  if  we  may  deplore  the  want  of  sweetness 
in  Carlyle,  might  we  not  regret  its  overabun- 
dance in  Mr.  Arnold's  nature  ?  His  best  friends 
might  wish  to  see  him — they  would  cer- 
tainly be  curious  to  see  him — lose  his  temper 
for  once  in  a  way  over  some  subject  that 
deserves  to  rouse  his  ire. 


ROBERT    BROWNING 

December  12,  1889 


ROBERT    BROWNING 

NE  by  one  the  Dii  majores  are 
leaving  us :  Carlyle,  George 
Eliot,,  Matthew  Arnold;  and 
now  Robert  Browning,  a  greater 
name  than  all  these,  has  passed 
into  silence.  It  is  almost  startling  to  notice 
how  their  death  radically  alters  their  relation 
to  us.  Not  only  is  their  work  rounded  off, 
finished  in  a  double  sense,  completed  into  a 
system,  informed  with  a  new  life,  as  if,  indeed, 
the  poet's  soul  had  passed  at  once  from  the 
body  to  the  works.  The  poet  has  gone ;  his 
works  at  once  group  themselves  into  an  organic 
whole,  and  become  his  work.  Yet  a  still  more 
vital  change  comes  over  our  relations  to  the 
imaginative  creator  when  his  bodily  presence 
is  withdrawn.  He  ceases  to  be  ours  alone; 
Robert  Browning  no  longer  speaks  only  for 
and  to  Victorian  England.  He  becomes  part 
of  England  of  the  past  and  of  the  future — part 
of  the  spiritual  heritage  for  which  Englishmen 
have  in  the  past  shown  themselves  willing  to 
die — part  of  the  English  ideal,  towards  which 
the  best  of  Englishmen  aim  to  live.  One 
advantage  immediately  accrues  from  the  ces- 


98  ROBERT  BROWNING 

sation  of  all  personal  intercourse  between  the 
world  and  the  poet.  The  idle  chatter  of 
relative  merit,  fls  he  greater  than  A?'  fls 
he  better  than  B?'  dies  away  with  his 
death.  Not  how  great  he  was,  but  what  he 
was,  engages  our  attention,  and  the  searching 
demand  that  the  soul  of  Robert  Browning 
makes  upon  each  and  all  of  us  who  care  for 
the  higher  life  of  our  nation  is,  '  What  I  have 
done  for  England,  say.' 

The  kingdom  of  poesy  hath  many  mansions. 
That  on  whose  portals  Robert  Browning's 
name  is  inscribed  is  distinguished  from  its 
neighbours  both  by  its  huge  size  and  by  its 
massive  strength.  The  style  is  Gothic  with  a 
curious  infusion  of  Italian  Renaissance.  Notice, 
before  we  enter,  the  quaint  gargoyles  that 
in  part  adorn,  in  part  disfigure,  every  por- 
tion of  the  architecture  that  is  susceptible  of 
ornamentation.  Gaining  entrance  with  some 
difficulty — for  the  porter  is  somewhat  gruff 
and  scant  of  speech,  giving  but  slight  guid- 
ance to  the  visitor — we  are  at  first  struck  by 
the  obscurity  that  reigns  in  the  interior,  only 
lit  up  here  and  there  by  lurid  splashes  of 
splendour  at  spots  which  are  in  direct  contact 
with  the  outer  sunshine.  But  one's  eyes 
soon  get  accustomed  to  the  dim  religious 
light,  and  if  we  have  to  strain  our  attention  to 
catch  the  scheme  of  ornamentation,  our  satis- 


ROBERT  BROWNING  99 

faction  is  the  greater  when  we  have  caught  it. 
The  decoration  is  elaborate  and  masterly,  but 
it  almost  always  gives  one  the  impression  of 
being  unfinished,  owing  to  its  over-elaboration. 
The  subjects,  again,  are  often  on  a  grand  scale, 
and  often  in  the  grand  style,  but  many  of 
them  claim  only  to  be  quaint  grotesques.  The 
fertility  of  design  is,  however,  extraordinary, 
and  the  mansion  is  abundantly  spacious,  each 
room  and  each  cranny  having  its  own  indivi- 
duality, marring  somewhat  the  unity  of  design 
of  the  whole.  Two  or  three  of  the  tapestries 
strike  us  as  of  clearer  outline  and  more  finished 
design  than  the  rest;  one  in  particular  in 
which  the  chief  figure  is  a  gaunt  musician 
followed  by  a  crowd  of  joyous  children.  An- 
other, too,  of  three  horsemen  takes  us,  as  it 
were,  out  into  the  open,  and  we  seem  to  feel 
the  air  rush  past  us  as  they  ride.  But  there 
is  no  need  to  complain  of  the  atmosphere  any. 
where ;  the  air  is  fresh  and  sweet  throughout ; 
no  closeness,  no  clouds  of  incense  or  whiffs  of 
stifling  perfume  offend  the  nostril.  One  suite 
of  rooms  entrances  our  attention  by  its  original 
scheme  of  ornament.  In  each  the  same 
design,  in  itself  somewhat  repulsive,  is  re- 
peated in  mirrors  of  different  shape,  parabolic, 
elliptical,  concave,  and  the  rest,  distorting  the 
image  in  each  case,  but  giving,  on  the  whole, 
a  curious  impression  of  reality.  Altogether 


TKIVEI 

N^C* 


100  ROBERT  BROWNING 

we  leave  the  mansion  with  a  feeling  of  having 
seen  one  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  poetic 
architecture,  and  with  an  abiding  sense  of  the 
high  achievement  and  higher  aspirations  of 
the  master  builder. 

But  enough  of  allegory,  though  the  one  we 
give  may  serve  as  well  as  another  to  suggest 
the  total  impression  made  by  Browning's 
work.  The  extent  of  his  achievements  is 
the  most  striking  quality.  Seventeen  volumes 
represent  the  poet's  legacy  to  his  countrymen. 
And  what  volumes  !  Crammed  with  thought, 
suffused  with  imagination,  crowded  with 
figures  with  life  more  real  than  half  the 
people  we  meet,  filled  with  suggestion, 
historic,  ethical,  artistic,  and  contemporary, 
they  represent  at  least  fifty  volumes,  if  their 
full  meaning  were  drawn  out  and  displayed. 
Nor  has  this  huge  bulk  been  attained  by 
harping  on  a  limited  set  of  themes.  On  the 
contrary,  his  topics  are  bewildering  in  their 
variety.  The  players  in  Hamlet  had  not  a  more 
varied  repertoire.  No  one  could  ever  guess 
what  a  new  volume  of  Browning  would  con- 
tain— whether  it  would  be  sportive  or  melo- 
dramatic, speculative  or  soul-searching.  And 
the  range  of  treatment  was  as  extensive  as 
that  of  subject.  He  was  not  a  great  metrical 
artist,  but  he  at  least  utilised  the  metrical 
themes  open  to  the  English  poet,  with  the 


ROBERT  BROWNING  101 

exception  only  of  the  more  recent  impor- 
tations from  France,  the  rondeau  and  the  rest. 
His  remarkable  versatility  is,  perhaps,  best 
shown  by  the  fact  that  his  most  popular  pro- 
ductions were  descriptive  pieces  of  pure  action 
— the  themes  of  Hamelin  and  Ghent — which 
were  outside  his  ordinary  range  of  interest, 
wide  as  that  was. 

'My  stress  lay  on  the  incidents  in  the 
'  development  of  a  soul ;  little  else  is  worth 
'  study.'  These  words  from  the  dedication  to 
the  reprint  of  Sordello — itself  the  key  to  all 
Browning's  more  serious  side — sum  up  his 
method.  Spiritual  dynamics,  the  influence  of 
soul  on  soul,  this  is  what  his  mind  fixes  upon 
amidst  all  the  plexuses  of  things.  Not  action, 
but  character,  and  not  character  formed,  but 
in  the  forming — there  is  the  staple  of  Brown- 
ing's art.  And  in  that  direction  his  power  is 
unique  in  the  world's  literature.  Comparisons 
have  been  made  with  Shakespeare  in  this 
regard,  but  here  the  superiority  is  with 
Browning  without  a  doubt,  and  a  moment's 
reflection  will  show  why  it  must  be  so.  The 
business  of  the  true  dramatist  is  with  action — 
with  character  too,  but  character  formed,  and 
only  so  far  as  action  brings  out  the  character 
that  is  already  there.  The  conditions  of  Shake- 
speare's art  prevented  him  from  dealing  with 
character  formation,  modification,  elevation, 


102  ROBERT  BROWNING 

development,  or  degradation,  to  the  extent 
that  Browning  deals  with  them.  Here,  too, 
is  the  secret  of  Browning's  failure  as  a  drama- 
tist, for  failure  it  was  for  a  man  of  Browning's 
calibre  not  to  excel  pre-eminently.  Who 
would  not  prefer  to  have  Colombe's  Birthday  or 
A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  as  a  dramatic  idyll  ? 
And  the  reason  is  that  the  dramatic  side  of 
these  dramas — the  action — is  not  the  thing  for 
which  the  poet  cares  or  makes  his  audience 
care.  Two  acts  of  Colombe  pass  without  any 
action  whatever.  Browning  had  a  quick  eye 
for  a  dramatic  situation ;  he  was  dramatic  in 
that  sense,  if  you  will.  But  of  the  power  of 
connecting  such  situations  together  into  one 
organic  whole,  in  which  each  should  add  force 
to  each — of  this,  the  true  dramatic  power,  he 
had  singularly  little.  Even  Pippa  Passes  has, 
with  all  its  grace  and  effectiveness,  no  real 
dramatic  unity.  Pippa  passes  through  a  series 
of  dramatic  situations,  and  so  strings  them 
together;  but  it  is  from  the  outside.  Con- 
trast the  far  more  effective  way  in  which  a 
poet  of  infinitely  less  poetic  force,  but  yet  of 
keener  dramatic  instinct,  M.  Fra^ois  Coppee, 
has  dealt  with  a  kindred  theme  in  Le  Passant. 
No,  Browning  was  no  born  dramatist,  and  was 
wisely  advised  by  his  own  instinct  to  turn  to 
'  Dramatic  Idyls '  or  f  Dramatis  Personae,'  or  in 
other  words,  dramatic  situations  instead  of 
dramas. 


ROBERT  BROWNING  103 

This  interest  in  characterisation  led  him 
to  one  of  the  most  original  of  his  themes 
— the  self-portrayal  of  the  humbug,  religious 
(Blougram),  political  (Schwangau),  or  social 
(Sludge).  These  are,  undoubtedly,  tours  de 
force  of  a  remarkable  kind — so  remarkable,, 
indeed,  that  they  condemn  themselves  as  unfit 
topics  for  poetry.  To  be  poetical  about  the 
very  antithesis  of  poetry ;  to  present  the  hum- 
bug and  the  materialist — and  sympathetically, 
for  that  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  the  pro- 
blem— in  a  medium  which  presupposes  sin- 
cerity and  idealism  as  essentials, — such  was 
the  task  Browning  set  himself  in  these  studies. 
The  failure  was  magnificent,  but  it  was  a 
failure ;  the  pieces  are  rhetoric,  ingenious  and 
subtle  rhetoric,  not  poetry  in  any  sense  of  the 
term  that  regards  its  essence  as  well  as  its  form. 

Akin  to  these  studies  of  problematische 
Naturen — "humours'  Ben  Jonson  called  them 
— is  his  portrait-gallery  of  historical  celebrities, 
or  rather  obscurities,  his  Parleyings  with  Certain 
People  of  Importance  in  their  Day,  a  title  of 
one  of  his  works  that  would  cover  a  large 
section  of  them.  It  is  characteristic  of  his 
method  that  his  subjects  are,  in  almost  every 
case,  nonentities.  No  literary  artist  who  has 
had  anything  like  his  power  of  projecting  him- 
self into  the  past  has  refrained  so  rigidly  from 
dealing  with  the  great  ones,  the  successes  of 


104  ROBERT  BROWNING 

history.  His  interest  is  with  the  failures; 
why  they  failed,  how  often  their  seeming 
failure  is  the  highest  success,  the  battling  of 
the  brave  but  weak  soul  with  the  might  of 
circumstance — these  are  the  favourite  themes 
of  his  historic  imagination.  Hence  a  some- 
what exaggerated  impression  of  the  extent  of 
his  learning.  By  the  very  exigencies  of  the 
case  his  dramatis  personce  had  to  be  obscurities, 
and,  owing  to  his  intimate  relations  with  Italy, 
these  were  mostly  Italian  obscurities,  of  whom 
Englishmen  had  no  knowledge.  Hence  the 
impression,  '  If  he  knows  the  obscurities  so 
'  well,  how  well  must  he  know  the  greater 
( lights  of  history ! '  Put  thus,  one  sees  the 
non  sequitur.  He  sought  for  the  curiosities  of 
history,  and  found  them  in  volumes  of  me- 
moirs, causes  celebres,  and  books  like  Wanley's 
Wonders  of  the  Little  World.  He  revived  in 
this  one  of  the  favourite  topics  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  Fall  of  Princes,  the  Mirror  for 
Magistrates,  and  his  portraits  recall  the  exempla 
of  the  mediaeval  moralists  and  sermonisers. 
In  this  again  he  was  on  the  search  for  dra- 
matic situations,  and  he  was  chiefly  interested 
in  the  pathos  of  disappointment. 

It  is  here  that  his  spiritual  influence  has 
been  most  profound.  No  English  poet  has 
felt  like  Browning  the  pathos  of  the  battle  of 
life.  Yet  keenly  as  he  felt  it,  he  did  not 


ROBERT  BROWNING  105 

despair  nor  bid  the  world  despair.  '  We  bid 
ye  be  of  good  hope'  was  his  message  to 
the  seeming  failures  in  life,  a  class  of  ever- 
growing importance  in  this  self-conscious  age. 
His  philosophy  of  life  was  eminently  manly, 
and  has  brought  cheer  to  many  a  despairing 
soul.  If  we  could  condense  it  into  a  formula, 
the  maxim  would  run,  '  Aspiration  is  achieve- 
'  ment.'  Herein  his  philosophy  approached 
closely  one  of  the  implicit  assumptions  of 
the  worldly  life.  The  man  of  the  world 
regards  every  experience  as  such  as  a  gain, 
apart  from  its  moral  implications.  It  is  better 
to  have  sinned  and  lived  than  never  to  have 
lived  at  all — never,  that  is,  to  have  developed 
one's  own  personality.  Much  of  Browning's 
thought  comes  perilously  near  this,  and  is 
only  redeemed  from  it  by  his  acute  sense  of 
the  mordant  poignancy  of  the  conscience-pang. 
On  the  whole,  his  influence  is  of  the  very 
highest  kind  in  this  part  of  his  work.  It  acts 
as  a  moral  tonic  to  be  brought  in  contact  with 
such  a  manly,  cheery  soul,  that  does  not  faintly 
trust  the  larger  hope,  but  is  confidently  sure 
that  in  aiming  at  the  highest  we  are  doing 
the  best  for  our  best  selves. 

Nowhere  is  his  influence  higher  in  this 
regard  than  in  his  love  poems,  the  highest 
test  of  a  poet's  powers.  The  world  is  right 
in  thinking  that  the  chief  business  of  the 


106  ROBERT  BROWNING 

poet  is  to  express  love  and  to  teach  how  to 
love.  Browning's  love  poems  are  equally 
remarkable  for  their  range  and  for  their  in- 
tensity. Nowhere  in  English  literature  does 
this  passion  of  love  burn  higher  or  burn 
purer.  The  passion  that  pulsates  through  In 
a  Balcony  or  In  a  Gondola  is  as  intense  as 
anything  in  Heine.,  and  yet  it  is  purged  of  all 
fleshly  dross.  Not  by  any  sacrifice  of  body 
to  spirit,  nor  by  any  lapse  into  sickly  senti- 
mentalism,  does  Browning  reach  this  result. 
The  claims  of  the  whole  being,  body  and 
spirit,  are  admitted  to  the  utmost,  and  as  a 
consequence  those  of  the  former  die  away  in 
the  serener  glow  of  the  spiritual  passion.  As 
Browning  regarding  the  struggle  of  life — the 
contest  of  soul  with  soul  or  against  all  souls — 
is  eminently  a  man,  so  in  his  depicting  of  love 
— the  union  of  soul  with  soul — he  is  pre- 
eminently the  gentleman.  Refinement  is  of 
the  very  soul  of  him,  and  that  without,  as  so 
often  happens,  any  loss  of  virile  strength. 
Here  more  than  anywhere  we  trace  the  in- 
fluence of  his  marriage,  that  ideal  union  of 
two  equally  gifted  souls  which  is  unique  in 
the  world's  history.  How  abiding  was  this 
influence  was  shown  but  a  few  months  before 
his  death  in  the  Fitzgerald  incident.  It  was 
clear  enough  to  the  dispassionate  observer 
that  Fitzgerald  was  speaking  of  Mrs.  Browning 


ROBERT  BROWNING  107 

the  writer,  not  Mrs.  Browning  the  woman. 
But  Browning  could  be  no  dispassionate  ob- 
server of  the  slightest  aspersion  on  his  wife, 
and  in  a  spirit  of  almost  boyish  gallantry 
struck  out  on  behalf  of  the  wife  who  had 
been  taken  from  his  side  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century. 

This  is,,  perhaps,,  the  place  to  treat  of 
Browning's  humour — a  necessary  side  of  a 
complete  poetic  nature.,  indeed  of  any  com- 
plete man.  Browning's  gift  in  this  direction 
was  large,  as  witness  the  Piper,  The  Two 
Poets  of  Croisic,  and  the  whole  series  of 
studies  of  humbugs  and  nonentities  to  which 
we  have  referred.  But  it  is  somewhat  one- 
sided, allied  to  his  interest  in  the  pathetic, 
and  thus  somewhat  grim.  But  it  is  never 
cynical,  except  when  dealing  with  cynics; 
and  though  it  is  rarely  hearty  or  a  direct 
object  of  his  art,  it  is  always  refined  and 
manly.  Mr.  Ruskin,  in  a  passage  remarkable 
for  its  insight  and  for  the  quarter  whence  it 
comes,  notices  how  inevitably  the  strongest 
English  poetic  force  tends  to  degenerate  into 
coarseness.  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Dryden, 
Byron,  are  instances  of  what  he  means. 
Browning  is  the  exception  to  the  rule — he 
has  the  strength  of  these,  but  he  has  not 
their  coarseness — and  here  again  we  probably 
have  to  thank  the  influence  of  the  Lyric  Love 


108  ROBERT  BROWNING 

that  interpenetrated  his  whole  being  during 
the  greater  part  of  his  life. 

All  the  qualities  we  have  been  noticing — 
his  virile  strength,  his  humour,  his  refinement, 
his  interest  in  the  pathetic,  the  pureness  and 
intensity  of  his  passion,  his  interest  in  the 
obscurities  of  history,  his  fertility  and  many- 
sidedness,  his  eye  for  the  dramatic  situation, 
but  want  of  the  true  dramatic  instinct — all 
these  qualities  culminate  in  The  Ring  and 
the  Book,  his  greatest  work  in  point  of  size 
and  in  the  sense  it  gives  us  of  his  sustained 
power.  But  the  whole  impression  is  one  of 
power  misdirected.  Not  to  speak  of  the 
irritating  bizarreries  of  the  advocates  and  of 
the  fractions  of  Rome,  the  whole  method  of 
the  book  is  anti-poetical.  Poetic  truth  does 
not  consist  in  displaying  the  facets  of  truth 
disconnectedly  :  the  poet  sees  life  singly  and 
sees  it  whole,  and  should  enable  us  so  to  see 
it.  But  if  the  experiment  of  trying  to  give 
the  totality  of  truth  by  presenting  its  dislo- 
cated parts  in  small  doses  is  a  failure,  what 
gigantic  powers  are  displayed  in  the  failure  ! 
The  Titan  piles  Pelion  on  Ossa,  and  if  he 
fails  to  reach  the  all-commanding  heights  of 
Olympus,  the  massy  pile  remains  as  an  en- 
during monument  of  his  strength  ;  and  the 
incidental  successes  on  the  way  to  the  failure 
would  be  sufficient  to  found  a  dozen  poetic 


ROBERT  BROWNING  109 

reputations.  The  contrast  of  Guide's  two 
soliloquies,  Pompilia's  purity,  the  Pope's  placid 
objectivity — these  and  a  thousand  other  points 
betray  the  master's  hand.  It  has  been  said 
that  the  whole  concentrated  energy  of  Vanity 
Fair  finds  a  vent  through  Colonel  Crawley's 
knuckles  as  he  stretches  the  marquis  at  his 
wife's  feet.  So  the  whole  pathos  and  tragedy 
of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  finds  utterance  in 
Guido's  last  words  : — 

Abate — Cardinal — Christ — Maria — God,  .  .  . 
Pompilia,  will  you  let  them  murder  me  ? 

but  the  highest  order  of  poet — one  that  con- 
trols his  faculties  instead  of  being  controlled 
by  them — would  not  have  been  led  astray 
from  such  effects  as  these  by  over-refinements 
of  intellectual  subtlety. 

There  we  reach  the  last  quality  of  Brown- 
ing's mind  of  which  we  need  take  explicit 
notice,  and  this  intellectual  subtlety  is  the 
disturbing  element  in  his  art.  He  is  both 
too  intellectual  and  too  subtle.  These  are 
qualities  the  reverse  of  poetical.  Not  that 
a  poet  need  be  a  fool  or  dense.  But  the 
things  of  the  intellect  must  be  subordinate  to 
the  purposes  of  his  art,  not  objects  of  inde- 
pendent interest.  The  intellect  analyses  and 
abstracts,  poetry  synthesises  and  concretes. 
In  consequence  of  Browning's  interest  in  the 


110  ROBERT  BROWNING 

gambollings  of  the  human  intellect,  and  espe- 
cially of  his  own  intellect,  much  of  his  work 
reads  like  so  many  exercises  in  forensic  dia- 
lectics. (  What  a  grand  Q.C.  the  world  has 
lost!'  is  our  thought,  but  that  is  not  a 
thought  that  a  great  poet  should  arouse. 
The  Browningites,  with  the  perverse  ingenuity 
of  the  uncritical  worshipper,  lay  stress  upon 
this  side  of  the  poet's  characteristics  as  if  it 
were  his  most  desirable  quality.  '  He  is 
so  subtle/  say  they^  and  think  they  have 
thereby  pronounced  his  greatest  praise.  Pro- 
found a  poet  should  be,  but  hardly  subtle. 
All  art  is  at  root  selective ;  the  poet's  art  con- 
sists in  selecting  out  of  the  mass  of  thoughts 
and  feelings  which  a  poetic  subject  arouses  in 
his  soul  those  streams  of  thought  and  emotion 
that  are  essential  to  the  subject.  But  Brown- 
ing too  often  did  not  select,  but  gave,  or 
attempted  to  give,  the  whole  mass.  The 
outcome  has  its  interest — the  interest  of  the 
riddle  and  the  puzzle,  which  have  their  at- 
traction for  the  uncultivated  or  the  immature 
mind.  But  it  is  a  vital  mistake  to  confuse 
this  interest,  as  the  Browningites  do,  with  the 
poetic  effect  which  the  poet  qua  poet  alone 
arrives  at.  '  How  clever  I  am  to  have  solved 
that ! '  is  the  feeling  produced  by  the  solu- 
tion of  the  riddle.  We  have  no  quarrel  with 
the  feeling,  but  it  is  vastly  different  from  the 


ROBERT  BROWNING  111 

proper  ejaculation  after  being  moved  by  the 
poet,  *  How  noble  to  have  felt  that !' 

Akin  to  this  is  the  error  of  placing  in  the 
forefront  of  his  work  the  argumentative  dis- 
quisitions on  theological  subjects,  which  form 
no  inconsiderable  portion  of  his  poetical  ac- 
tivity. There  is  no  reason  why  a  poet  should 
not  be  a  theologian;  in  these  days,  which 
have  seen  more  theological  disquisition  than 
any  period  since  the  Council  of  Trent,  there 
is  every  reason  why  a  poet  should  share  in 
such  an  absorbing  interest  of  the  audience  he 
addresses.  But  he  has  not  to  display  the 
processes  of  his  thoughts  on  theology  ;  he  has 
only  to  give  results  in  imaginative  form. 
Browning  has  shown  how  to  do  this  in  Rabbi 
ben  Ezra,  but  he  has  also  shown  us  how  not  to 
do  it  in  La  Saisiaz.  The  poet  may  be — nay, 
he  must  be — very  sure  of  God  and  of  an 
eternal  soul,  but  he  is  to  convince  us  by  his 
very  sureness,  not  by  process  of  reasoning. 

We  have  now  touched  on  all  the  sides  of 
the  poetic  activity  of  Browning  which  need 
touching  upon  for  the  purpose  of  indicating 
the  poetic  force  of  the  man,  the  large  stores 
of  spiritual  energy  which  are  contained  in 
his  works.  But  poetry  has  form  as  well  as 
force,  and  we  know  but  half  of  a  poet's  art 
when  we  have  measured  his  poetic  force. 
And  in  judging  of  Browning's  poetic  form 


112  ROBERT  BROWNING 

there  can  be  no  hesitation  about  the  verdict. 
He  was  faulty  in  form  almost  always — fault- 
less scarcely  ever.  Often,  indeed,  his  choice 
of  metre  struck  a  false  note  from  the  start; 
he  wrote  argument  in  jerky  trochaics,  he  ex- 
pressed lyric  emotion  in  blank  verse.  Such 
lapses  in  a  man  of  sure  touch  in  matters  of 
this  sort  point  to  some  inherent  defect  in  the 
poet's  method.  Worse  even  than  this  was 
the  over-subtlety  of  intellect  to  which  we 
have  already  referred,  and  which  is  at  the 
root  of  his  so-called  obscurity.  He  attempted 
not  only  to  give  the  emotive  iridescence  of 
the  poetic  afflatus,  but  also  at  the  same  time 
to  suggest  the  accompanying  inrush  of  cluster- 
ing thoughts.  The  psychology  of  the  poetic 
afflatus  is  obscure,  but  one  thing  is  at  least 
certain  about  it.  Under  the  inrush  of  the 
emotive  impulse  the  poet  remains  master  of 
his  passion,  directing  it  into  artistic  channels. 
Browning  had  this  power  to  the  highest,  and 
misused  it.  He  attempted  the  impossible 
task  of  setting  forth  in  verse  the  totality  of 
impressions,  emotional,  aesthetic,  and  intel- 
lectual, which  his  object  made  upon  him. 
When  one  reflects  on  what  the  totality  of 
impressions  on  such  a  nature  as  Browning's 
must  mean,  one  recognises  the  impossibility 
of  the  task.  To  make  even  an  approach  to 
it  he  had  to  write  in  a  kind  of  lyric  shorthand, 


ROBERT  BROWNING  113 

and  his  sentences  become  congested  with 
suggestion.  Hence  their  stimulating  effect,, 
but  it  is  not  a  poetical  one.  The  poet's  art 
consists  in  selecting  one  particular  order  of 
impressions  out  of  the  totality  which  'inspires' 
him.  To  attempt  to  give  the  whole  is,  we 
will  not  say  inartistic,  but  extra-artistic.  The 
poetic  influence  is  diffracted  and  dispersed 
among  the  conflicting  orders  of  interest  that 
are  aroused.  It  is  much  the  same  effect,  to 
use  a  homely  illustration,  as  is  produced  by 
the  attempt  to  watch  Barnum's  five  per- 
formances all  at  once.  Only  one  art  is 
capable  of  producing  unity  amid  such  com- 
plexity; not  poetry,  but  music,  was  the  art 
in  which  Browning's  method  was  possible. 
His  whole  conception  of  poetic  form  was 
consequently  false,  and  goes  far  to  mar  the 
greatest  poetic  force  England  has  seen  for 
centuries.  Perhaps  the  secret  of  the  matter 
was  that  his  imagination  was  less  intense 
than  that  of  most  poets  of  anything  like  his 
power.  With  them  the  vivid  mental  picture 
enables  them  to  concentrate  attention  on  it, 
and  to  inhibit,  as  the  psychologists  say,  the 
crowd  of  surging  thoughts  that  accompany  it. 
That  Browning  had  less  of  this  visual  insight 
than  most  poets  is  shown  by  the  comparative 
infrequency  of  descriptive  passages  as  well  as 
by  a  certain  lack  of  minute  observation  of 
H 


114  ROBERT  BROWNING 

externals.  His  insight  was  into  the  soul  of 
things.  His  translations  from  the  Greek 
brought  out  his  imperfect  form  in  a  most 
instructive  way.  While  he  reproduced  their 
spirit  very  effectually,  he  was  hopelessly  in- 
adequate in  representing  their  form.  It  was 
as  if  Greek  temples  had  been  transformed 
into  Gothic  cathedrals.  The  sense  of  rugged 
power  is  always  with  us,  rarely  or  never  the 
impression  of  god-like  grace.  He  was  of 
the  Titans,  not  of  the  Gods. 

Standing  by  his  open  grave,  we  give  the 
last  thought  to  the  man  we  have  lost  as  well 
as  the  poet.  His  warm  geniality  made  him 
a  universal  favourite  in  society.  If  to  some  it 
seems  incongruous  to  think  of  the  vates  sacer 
at  the  five  o'clock  tea-table,  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  spiritual  influence  of  such 
a  nature  would  radiate  through  the  very  class 
that  needs  idealising.  With  him  has  gone  a 
spiritual  force  of  the  first  magnitude.  The 
firm  friend,  the  free  giver,  the  sympathiser 
in  all  the  higher  forms  of  the  nation's  life,  the 
inspirer  of  painting,  music,  and  the  higher 
criticism  —  all  these  are  gone  in  Robert 
Browning  the  man.  And  notwithstanding 
all  deductions  of  faulty  form,  of  infelicitous 
choice  of  subject  and  medium,  a  large  body 
of  work  remains  of  Browning  the  poet  in 
which  these  imperfections  were  reduced  to  a 


ROBERT  BROWNING  115 

minimum.  If  aspiration  were  indeed  achieve- 
ment, Robert  Browning  would  have  been 
the  greatest  name  in  the  roll  of  English 
poets ;  and  even  as  it  is,  his  work  will 
rank  among  the  greatest  spiritual  forces  of 
England. 


JOHN    HENRY    NEWMAN 

August  11,  1890 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN 

GREAT  leader  of  men,  an  in- 
fluential ecclesiastic,  a  man  of 
saintly  life,  a  spiritual  force  of 
great  power,  a  master  of  Eng- 
lish prose,  has  passed  away  from 
us  with  John  Henry  Newman.  To  modern 
England  he  has  been  as  one  of  the  dead  from 
the  night  Father  Dominic,  the  Passionist, 
passed  over  his  threshold  at  Littlemore,  and 
he  has  himself  written  the  biography  of  that 
dead  self  in  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  English 
literature.  What  Father  Newman  did  in  life 
and  letters  is  of  quite  subordinate  interest  to 
the  spiritual  career  of  the  Fellow  of  Oriel,  who 
exercised  so  much  influence  on  the  Church  of 
England  and  might  have  exercised  more.  It 
is  only  so  far  as  that  career  has  affected  the 
inner  life  of  England  and  its  manifestations 
in  English  letters  that  it  can  be  considered 
in  this  place. 

It  seems  almost  a  paradox  to  say  of  the 
author  of  forty  volumes  that  his  true  sphere 
was  in  action,  not  thought  or  literature.  Yet 
it  is  a  paradox  that  contains  more  than  the 

119 


120  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

usual  fraction  of  truth.  He  was  born  to  lead 
men;  the  very  modesty  that  caused  him  at 
times  to  deny  this  concealed  his  dissatisfaction 
even  with  the  enormous  mastery  over  men's 
souls  and  fates  that  he  wielded  for  so  many 
years.  It  was  by  personal  intercourse  that  he 
sought  to  move  the  world,  and  did  move  it. 
The  tenacity  with  which  he  clung  to  old 
friendships  was  significant  of  much.  His 
whole  life  was  a  sermon,  the  text  of  which 
might  well  be  the  title  of  his  epoch-making 
discourse,  Personal  Intercourse  the  Means  of  Pro- 
pagating the  Truth — the  sermon  that  really 
started  the  Tractarian  Movement,,  and  not 
Keble's  on  National  Apostasy.  Throughout 
his  Anglican  period  the  ecclesiastical  things 
which  touched  him  most  nearly  were  not 
things  of  dogma,  but  lay  in  the  sphere  of 
almost  practical  politics.  At  every  point  of 
his  career  it  was  some  problem  in  the  rela- 
tions of  Church  and  State  that  affected  him 
most  strongly.  The  abolition  of  the  Irish 
bishoprics,  the  miserable  muddle  of  the 
Jerusalem  bishopric,  the  alliance  of  O'Con- 
nell  and  the  Whigs — these  things,  and  things 
like  these,  are  the  turning-points  of  his 
career.  Even  the  diplomatic  reserve  and 
' economy  of  truth'  with  which  the  world 
credited  him  for  so  many  years  were  marks 
of  the  ecclesiastical  statesman,  not  of  the 
religious  thinker. 


JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN  121 

It  bears  out  this  classification  of  him  as  a 
man  of  action,  not  of  thought,  that  almost 
every  one  of  the  forty  volumes  of  which  we 
have  spoken  is  what  might  be  termed  occa- 
sional. His  sermons,  fine  as  they  are,  are 
occasional  on  the  face  of  them.  f  Tract  No. 
xc/  is  a  tract  for  immediate  consumption. 
The  magnificent  Apologia  is  but  a  pamphlet 
writ  large.  His  Verses  are,  as  their  title-page 
informs  us,  fon  Various  Occasions.'  Even 
when  he  engaged  in  works  that  might  seem 
to  imply  a  purely  theoretic  interest,  like  his 
Essay  on  Development,  they  were  written  with 
a  practical  aim,  even  though  it  were  a  per- 
sonal one — of  working  the  subject  out  to 
'  quiet  him/  as  he  said,  somewhat  after  the 
principle  of  K<£0a/oo-is,  familiar  to  the  Greeks 
and  to  Goethe.  His  was  not  the  writer's 
nature  that  is  irresistibly  impelled  to  writing 
and  thinking  for  their  own  sakes.  He 
thought,  he  wrote,  that  he  might  influence 
the  actions  of  men.  He  did  influence  their 
actions,  but,  as  a  consequence,  most  of  what 
he  wrote  has  in  reality  died  away  with  its 
practical  effect,  and  of  his  forty  volumes  but 
a  few  sermons,  '  Lead,  kindly  Light ' — the  one 
hymn  of  our  language — the  Apologia,  and 
perhaps  The  Idea  of  a  University,  will  form 
.permanent  additions  to  English  literature. 
His  histories  are  unhistorical,  his  criticism 


122  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

uncritical,  and  much  of  his  theology  is  founded 
on  his  history  and  his  criticism.  His  Arians 
and  his  Via  Media,  his  Anglican  Difficulties, 
even  his  Grammar  of  Assent,  have  mainly  a 
personal  interest  to  commend  them. 

And  yet  what  literary  powers  were  those 
that  thus  seem  to  have  been  squandered 
away  on  temporary  objects !  Bizarre  as  his 
reasoning  seemed  to  most  of  us,  how  subtly 
he  weaved  the  weft  of  it !  Dealing  for  the 
most  part  with  subjects  remote  from  human 
interest,  he  would  so  order  his  argument 
that  it  would  have  the  attraction  of  a  plot 
for  us.  Topics  that  seemed  forbidding  both 
for  their  theological  technicalities  and  their 
repulse  of  reason  were  presented  by  him 
with  such  skill  that  they  appeared  as  in- 
evitable as  Euclid  and  as  attractive  as  Plato. 
All  the  resources  of  a  master  of  English  style 
— except,  perhaps,  one,  description — were  at 
his  command;  pure  diction,  clear  arrange- 
ment, irony,  dignity,  a  copious  command  of 
words  combined  with  a  reserve  in  the  use  of 
them — all  these  qualities  went  to  make  up 
the  charm  of  Newman's  style,  the  finest  flower 
that  the  earlier  system  of  a  purely  classical 
education  has  produced.  It  is  curious,  by  the 
way,  that  the  only  two  men  of  our  time  who 
have  written  on  theology  and  possessed  a 
style,  Dr.  Martineau  and  Newman,  have  had 


JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN  123 

Huguenot  blood  in  their  veins.  And  with 
Newman  all  this  was  informed  with  the 
attraction  of  a  personality  so  rare  and  a 
nature  so  rich  that  the  appeal  is  irresistible 
even  to  those  who  care  little  for  his  topics. 

Yes,  that  was  an  exceptionally  rich  nature 
which  has  just  been  removed  from  the  world. 
He  moved  many  men,  because  he  had  within 
him  the  making  of  many  men.  He  had 
points  of  contact  with  nearly  all  the  currents 
of  thought  and  feeling  which  were  to  trans- 
form the  higher  England  in  Queen  Victoria's 
reign.  That  revolt  of  his  against  f  Liberalism/ 
as  he  called  it,  was  prophetic  of  nearly  all  the 
deeper  movements  of  our  time.  The  resort 
to  history  for  spiritual  nourishment,  which  led 
him  from  the  Evangelicalism  of  Simeon  to 
Rome  herself,  has  become  a  source  of  inspira- 
tion for  the  higher  politics  and  economics  of 
our  time.  There  was  something,  too,  of  the 
romantic  temper  in  him — that  return  to  the 
mystic  glow  and  imaginative  colouring  of  the 
Middle  Ages  that  has  done  so  much  for  our 
literature  and  our  art.  Even  the  method  of 
evolution  appears  to  have  operated  on  New- 
man's mind  in  the  doctrine  of  development 
that  finally  led  him  to  Rome.  And  that 
absorbing  interest  of  Newman  in  dogmatic 
theology  was  but  a  foreshadowing  of  what 
has  befallen  most  of  England's  higher  minds 


124  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

during  the  past  half-century,  even  when  it 
has  led  them  to  agnosticism.  England  is  the 
only  European  country  that  cares  for  theology, 
say  continental  observers,  and  its  passionate 
interest  in  theology  begins  in  this  century 
with  the  movement  with  which  Newman's 
name  will  for  ever  be  connected.  Even  the 
rise  of  the  interest  in  art  and  music  seems  to 
be  foreshadowed  in  Newman's  own  personal 
fondness  for  them.  Newmanism,  as  we  may 
call  it,  included  all  these  things,  and  thus 
touched  the  national  life  in  the  early  decades 
of  Queen  Victoria's  reign  in  far  more  points 
than  might  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  the  case. 

But  it  was  chiefly  and  mainly  in  his  passion 
for  theology  that  he  came  nearest  to  the 
higher  strivings  of  his  countrymen.  In  no 
one  of  his  time  was  manifested  more  strongly 
the  wish  to  believe  which  some  of  his  dis- 
ciples have  ranked  so  high  above  the  desire 
to  know.  His  whole  life  was  dominated  by 
this  wish,  and  it  is  this  that  gives  such  dra- 
matic unity  to  the  Apologia.  No  other  auto- 
biography— certainly  not  that  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, its  nearest  prototype  in  literature — is 
so  intensely  theological.  It  is  not  the  life  of 
a  man  we  read,  it  is  the  drama  of  a  soul,  and 
of  a  soul  entirely  occupied  with  the  relations 
of  itself  to  God.  Surely  few  men  have 
always  lived  their  life  so  completely  in  the 


JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN  125 

great  Taskmaster's  eye.  He  seems  to  have 
ever  lived  in  the  spirit  of  that  childish  fancy 
of  his,  that  the  men  around  him  were  angels 
disguised  in  human  form — in  other  words, 
that  God  and  he  were  the  only  noumenal 
realities  of  the  world.  It  was  characteristic 
of  his  whole  tone  of  thought  that  in  dealing 
with  what  seemed  to  be  a  purely  logical 
problem  in  his  Grammar  of  Assent,  he  postulated 
a  new  sense — the  Illative  Sense — clearly  for 
the  one  purpose  of  giving  validity  to  faith. 
Logician  as  he  was,  he  subordinated  here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  claims  of  logic  to  the  claims  of 
theology. 

What  was  it,  then,  that  caused  c  Newman- 
ism'  to  be  ultimately  ineffective  and  led 
Newman  further  and  further  away  from  the 
main  currents  of  English  thought  and  feeling  ? 
All  these  rich  forces  of  his  spiritual  nature 
were  tyrannised  over  by  a  subtle  intellect 
and  a  passion  for  logical  consequence  which 
is  furthest  removed  from  English  habits  of 
mind,  and  may,  perhaps,  be  traced  to  his 
Huguenot  mother,  as  it  has  been  equally  ex- 
emplified, though  in  an  opposite  direction, 
by  Professor  Newman,  the  Cardinal's  brother. 
No  Frenchman  could  be  more  consequent  in 
following  logic  to  an  absurdity  than  Newman. 
Now  English  institutions,  whether  of  State 
or  Church,  are  founded  on  compromise,  or 


126  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

the  renunciation  of  logical  consistency. 
Hence  the  aloofness  of  Newman  from  the 
practical  course  of  English  politics,  ecclesias- 
tical or  constitutional.  There  is  something 
foreign  about  his  whole  tone  of  thinking, 
which  has  found  a  natural  and  logical  outcome 
in  his  death  as  a  cardinal  of  the  Roman 
Church.  The  same  attitude  of  mind  accounts 
for  his  deficiency  in  the  essentially  English 
feeling  of  humour,  which  is  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  spirit  of  compromise.  Irony 
he  possessed  in  all  its  efficacy,  but  the 
attempts  at  humour  in  his  so-called  novels, 
Loss  and  Gain  and  Callista,  are  strained  in  the 
extreme. 

f'  How  comes  it,  then,  that  Newman,  of  all 
men  in  the  world,  with  his  hatred  of  com- 
promise and  thirst  after  logicality,  should 
have  ever  thought  to  find  rest  in  a  via  media, 
a  compromise  among  compromises  ?  There 
comes  in  another  quality  of  his  mind,  which 
is  equally  un-English  outside  the  particular 
profession  for  which  it  is  appropriate.  In 
reckoning  up  the  formative  influences  on  his 
character,  something  should  be  said  of  the 
legal  tone  which  was  given  to  it  in  early  years 
by  the  fact  that  he  was  intended  for  the  Bar. 
There  is  a  curious  touch  of  the  man  of  the 
world  in  much  that  was  done  and  said  by  the 
author  of  the  Dream  of  Gerontius.  In  much 


JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN  127 

of  his  dialectic  there  is  a  subtlety  of  distinc- 
tion which  recalls  the  legal  quibble,  and  at 
times  even  the  legal  fiction.  It  was  a  crude 
feeling  of  this  that  caused  Kingsley  to  ask 
his  famous  question,  'What,  then,  does  Dr. 
Newman  mean  ? '  to  which  he  obtained  so 
crushing  a  reply.  To  the  Philistine  truth  is 
a  matter  of  yea  or  nay ;  there  is  no  place  for 
subtle  gradations  of  meaning  and  reference. 
Kingsley  was,  with  all  his  powers,  something 
of  a  Philistine,  and  required  this  sharpness  of 
outline  in  what  we  may  term  truths  of  the 
emotions.  Newman  easily  overthrew  the  con- 
tention, but  the  very  subtleties  which  he  had 
to  introduce  into  his  defence,  in  all  parts  of 
it  that  were  not  merely  personal,  gave  the 
British  public  an  uneasy  feeling  that  there 
was  some  justification  for  Kingsley's  general 
position.  Newman  amply  vindicated  his  own 
personal  veracity,  but  he  was  scarcely  so 
successful  in  removing  all  suspicion  of  what 
is  euphemistically  termed  f  economy  of  truth ' 
in  the  practice  of  the  Church  he  had  joined, 
and  in  his  own  method  of  dealing  with 
theological  problems.  It  was  the  nisi  prius 
tone  that  left  this  impression,  and  it  was 
generally  this  legal  and  quibbling  tone  in  the 
treatment  of  religious  topics  that  helped  to 
undermine  Newman's  influence  from  the  time 
of  the  appearance  of  '  Tract  No.  xc/ 


128  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

It  was,  too,  this  nisi  prius  attitude  that 
enabled  Newman  to  believe  as  long  as  he  did 
in  his  via  media.  It  is  impossible  even  at  this 
distance  of  time  to  explain  with  any  clearness 
the  subtle  distinctions  which  in  Newman's 
mind  differentiated  the  Anglican  Church,  as 
the  via  media,  from  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  The  distinctions  he  makes  are 
exactly  of  the  legal  kind.  There  was  no 
room  in  his  mind  for  what  Englishmen  would 
call  the  common-sense  method  of  solving  the 
difficulties  his  own  subtleties  had  raised.  He 
never  to  the  last  faced  the  plain  fact  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  no  longer  occupies 
the  position  of  the  Church  of  the  fifth  century 
or  of  the  fifteenth.  That  Church  is  so  far 
removed  from  the  tone  and  feeling  of  the 
modern  world  that  it  is  impossible  to  consider 
conversion  to  its  fold  anything  but  il  gran 
rifiuto  of  these  latter  days — a  renunciation  of 
all  the  privileges  the  modern  mind  holds  dear ; 
and,  to  do  it  justice,  the  Roman  Church  fully 
recognises  the  fact.  But  it  remains  that 
Newman  did  make  the  renunciation,  and 
thereby  declared  his  antipathy  to  the  modern 
ideals.  They  who  hold  to  those  ideals  may 
admire  Newman,  but  they  must  condemn  his 
renunciation  of  reason  and  its  claims. 

He  had  the  head  of  a  lawyer,  we  have  said, 
but  it  should  be  added  that  he  had  the  heart 


JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN  129 

of  a  saint.  The  saintly  life  has  never  been 
more  faithfully  followed  than  by  John  Henry 
Newman.  It  is  due  to  his  life  more  than  to 
his  doctrines  or  his  presentation  of  them  that 
so  marked  a  change  of  public  opinion  has 
occurred  about  Newman  and  about  his  Church. 
After  all,  men  judge  creeds  by  the  characters 
they  produce  rather  than  by  the  logical  con- 
sistency of  their  doctrines.  That  the  pen- 
dulum of  public  opinion  about  Roman  Catholics 
in  England  has  swung  back  from  violent 
antipathy  to  sympathetic  admiration  is  due  in 
large  measure  to  the  saintly  life  of  John 
Henry  Newman. 


BUTTON'S   « NEWMAN'* 

R.  HUTTON  opens  yet  another 
new  series  by  a  biographical  essay 
on  Cardinal  Newman ,whichseems 
likely  to  be  the  first  of  many 
biographies  of  the  late  Cardinal. 
It  is  but  fair  to  Mr.  Hutton  to  add  at  once 
that  it  was  prepared  during  Newman's  life- 
time, and  has  not  been  hurriedly  written  to 
supply  a  demand  caused  by  the  Cardinal's 
death.  It  is  far  from  a  biography  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  the  word ;  of  the  man  apart 
from  the  theologian  we  hear  but  little.  Mr. 
Hutton  has  essayed  to  give  a  short  history 
of  Newman's  religious  opinions  while  he  was 
in  the  Anglican  Church,  derived  in  the  main 
from  the  Apologia,  but  told  from  a  point  of 
view  necessarily  less  personal,  and  therefore 
more  impartial. 

In   many  ways  the  essay  is  successful   in 

giving  the  reader  the  main  critical  points  in 

that  remarkable  transition  from  the  extreme 

left  to  the  extreme  right  of  Christian  thought. 

Mr.  Hutton' s  abstracts   are  clear,  and   his 

*  English  Leaders  of  Religion. — Cardinal  Newman. 
By  R.  H.  Hutton.     (Methuen  &  Co.) 

130 


BUTTON'S  'NEWMAN*  131 

criticisms  judicious,  if  not  profound.  Yet 
somehow  the  total  impression  left  is  not  a 
very  decided  one,  owing,  perhaps,  to  the 
absence  of  any  summary  of  the  main  lines  of 
development  which  led  from  Newman  the 
Evangelical  to  Newman  the  Cardinal.  The 
stages  are  clear,  and  have  been  discriminated 
once  for  all  by  Newman  himself  in  the 
Apologia.  It  was  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
for  any  one  coming  after  Newman  to  improve 
on  that  statement,  or  amend  it  in  any  way. 
The  chief  merit  Mr.  Hutton's  treatment  can 
claim  is  that  of  conciseness. 

The  main  lines  of  that  development  are 
familiar  enough  by  this  time  to  all  who  have 
read  Newman's  masterpiece.  How  the  in- 
tense Evangelicalism  of  his  boyish  years  was 
gradually  dissolved  and  replaced  by  an  equally 
intense  conception  of  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  and  how  this  led  logically  on  to  the 
momentous  question,  '  Which  is  the  true 
Church  ? '  how  this  was  answered  at  first 
with  the  old  high  and  dry  Churchmen,  and 
then,  as  the  Erastianism  of  the  Anglican 
Church  as  then  constituted  became  clear,  how 
the  need  of  Church  reform  or  reformation 
became  apparent,  and  so  the  via  media  was 
devised  as  the  ideal  towards  which  the  new 
reformation  should  travel — all  this  is  some- 
thing we  have  all  known  since  1864,  if, 


132  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

indeed,,  it  was  not  known  earlier.  Mr. 
Hutton  has  now  and  again  a  comment  on 
the  facts  or  the  views,  or  he  contests  the 
contentions  of  the  Tractarians  on  various 
points,  but  as  a  rule  he  tells  again  the  twice 
told  tale,  with  clearness,  indeed,  but  without 
much  force. 

It  is  only  when  he  comes  to  the  culmin- 
ating episode — the  composition  of  the  Essay 
on  Development  —  that  Mr.  Hutton  offers 
much  that  is  fresh  or  throws  light  on  the 
matter  in  hand.  The  chapter  devoted  to  this 
remarkable  book  is  a  closely  written  piece  of 
analysis  interwoven  with  comment  that  does 
credit  to  Mr.  Hutton.  He  makes  too  much, 
perhaps,  of  the  anticipation  of  Darwinism 
involved  in  such  a  treatment  of  doctrine.  The 
idea  was  in  the  air  at  the  time.  Chambers' s 
Vestiges  of  Creation,  which  appeared  just  then, 
was  only  the  popularisation  of  much  evolution- 
ary speculation  that  was  going  on  around 
Newman  as  he  was  writing  his  essay  on  the 
relation  of  doctrinal  evolution  and  truth,  for 
that  is  his  main  subject.  What  are  the  signs 
that  show  which  doctrinal  changes  are  de- 
velopment and  which  degeneration  ?  That  is 
the  problem  which  Newman  set  himself  to 
solve  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  as  an  Angli- 
can. We  all  know  the  answer  that  he  practi- 
cally gave  to  the  question,  but  it  is  of  interest 


BUTTON'S  <  NEWMAN '  133 

to  have  presented  to  us  so  clear  a  summary  of 
the  main  points  which  led  Newman  to  seek 
the  true  Church  in  Rome  alone,  and  not,  as 
heretofore,  in  the  ideal  Middle  Way  which  he 
and  his  school  were  to  make  dominant  in  the 
Anglican  Church. 

The  seven  marks  of  true  development  were 
to  be  found  in  the  Roman  Church,  and  in  the 
Roman  Church  alone,  and  therefore  Newman 
joined  that  communion.  The  remarkable 
thing  about  all  this  is  the  intensely  theological 
tone  of  the  whole  procedure — theological  as 
opposed  to  religious.  Mr.  Hutton  has  a  whole 
chapter  devoted  to  a  defence  of  Newman  from 
the  charge  of  being  secretly  infidel  or  scepti- 
cal. But  to  any  one  who  reads  a  page  of  his 
writings  it  is  abundantly  clear  that  Newman 
never  came  within  the  region  where  doubt  or 
infidelity  exists.  His  whole  attitude  towards 
faith  is  a  proof  of  this.  He  never  needed  a 
foundation  for  his  faith,  for  the  faith  itself  was 
a  presumption  in  favour  of  the  facts  or  feelings 
that  were  to  prove  the  faith.  This  is  perhaps 
not  altogether  a  fair  way  of  stating  the  case  ; 
but  Newman  is  consistent  throughout  in  de- 
claring that  faith  itself  is  the  most  effectual 
way  of  removing  the  difficulties  that  attend 
faith,  nowadays  most  of  all,  but  that  have 
attended  it  at  all  times  in  the  world's  history. 

Indeed,  this  utter  absence  of  any  scepticism 


134  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

as  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  revealed 
religion  is  implied  hi  such  a  treatment  of 
theology  as  was  adopted  in  Newman's  writ- 
ings both  while  he  was  within  and  after  he 
had  left  the  Anglican  Church.  It  is  to  him 
the  scientia  scientiarum,  a  kind  of  deductive 
science  analogous  to  geometry,  starting,  like 
it,  with  definitions,  and  assuming,  like  it,  a 
number  of  axioms.  This  conception  at  once 
leads  on  to  sacerdotalism,  as  it  is  obvious  that 
the  knowledge  of  such  a  technical  science  and 
its  application  to  practice  can  only  be  safely 
intrusted  to  experts.  Hence  the  opposition 
of  the  Tractarians  to  Protestantism,  which  from 
this  point  of  view  represents  the  claim  of 
the  common  man  to  understand  and  apply 
a  highly  technical  science. 

When  we  combine  with  this  confidence  in 
the  capacity  of  a  dogmatic  theology  to  solve 
the  difficulties  of  life  an  intense  feeling  of  the 
historic  continuity  of  the  race  we  have  the 
idees  meres  of  Newman's  position  throughout 
his  career.  The  conception  of  the  unity  of 
history  is  implied  in  all  Newman's  work,  and 
is  the  foundation  of  his  conception  of  reli- 
gious development  that  led  him  ultimately  to 
Rome.  Simultaneously  almost  with  Hegel's 
philosophy  of  history  Newman  applied  the 
conception  of  evolution  to  man's  spiritual 
nature,  before  Spencer,  Darwin,  and  Wallace 


BUTTON'S  < NEWMAN*  135 

had  applied  the  same  ruling  idea  to  organic 
nature.  That  this  should  have  led  him  and 
his  school  to  Rome  is  easily  comprehensible 
now,  but  Newman's  history  in  the  Anglican 
Church  was  a  bold  attempt  to  claim  for  her 
the  same  privileges  as  the  Church  of  Rome 
in  this  respect. 

Mr.  Hutton  rests  his  claim  for  Newman's 
greatness  on  the  persistency  with  which  he 
applied  himself  to  the  working  out  in  full 
detail  of  his  main  conceptions  in  theology, 
and  on  the  greatness  of  the  powers  which,  as 
Mr.  Hutton  intimates,  he  sacrificed  to  those 
objects.  He  might  have  been,  it  is  argued,  a 
great  poet  or  a  great  literary  artist  in  prose, 
and  he  gave  this  up  in  order  to  save  the 
Church  of  England  and  to  devote  his  whole 
energies  to  theology.  It  is  very  doubtful,  we 
think,  whether  Newman  would  have  become 
a  great  poet  in  any  other  way  than  he  did, 
as  a  hymn-writer  and  as  the  author  of  The 
Dream  of  Geroni'ms.  It  is,  again,  somewhat 
difficult  to  guess  in  what  direction  but  the 
theological  Newman's  exquisite  prose,  which 
at  times  became  over-florid  in  his  Romish 
works,  could  have  been  effective.  He  had 
few  of  the  qualities  that  make  the  great 
historian,  his  literary  essays  are  not  even 
readable  nowadays,  and  his  so-called  novels 
are  only  of  interest  in  their  theological  bear- 


136  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

ing.  Newman's  whole  mind  and  spiritual 
feeling  were  against  the  whole  position  of 
modern  research — he  could  not  bear  not  to 
know. 

Mr.  Hutton  is  basing  his  hero's  claim  on 
a  false  issue.  Newman's  claim  to  greatness 
does  not  lie  in  any  deliberate  sacrifice  of  pro- 
blematic powers  for  the  sake  of  theological 
science.  He  deserves  the  name  of  great 
because  in  an  age  of  materialism  and  super- 
ficial intellectualism  he  held  aloft  the  banner 
of  spiritualism,  because  amidst  all  obloquy  and 
insult  he  held  to  what  he  considered  the 
truth,,  because  he  yielded  up  the  proud  posi- 
tion of  a  great  spiritual  leader  to  follow  the 
inward  summons.  He  has  been  one  of  the 
operative  forces  that  have  aided  to  transform 
England.  It  is  for  this  reason  he  has  been 
honoured  and  mourned  by  Englishmen  of  all 
creeds,  quite  apart  from  the  merits  and  de- 
merits of  the  theology  to  which  he  devoted 
his  saintly  life. 


'LETTERS;    ETC.* 

FTER  a  great  man's  death  the 
floodgates  of  biography  are 
opened.  First  come  the  press 
memoirs,,  often  running  to  the 
length  of  monographs,  then  the 
magazine  articles  and  the  popular  lives,  and 
the  climax  is  reached  by  the  official  biography  ; 
itself,  perhaps,  to  be  followed  by  rival  lives, 
or  at  least  popular  summaries.  This  familiar 
process  is  clearly  being  followed  in  the  case 
of  Newman,  and  we  are  now  in  the  midst  of 
the  first  onrush  of  the  waters.  The  three 
books  under  notice  include  the  first  instalment 
of  the  official  biography,  dealing  with  Newman's 
life  as  an  Anglican,  Mr.  Fletcher's  popular 
life,  and  a  revised  reprint  of  Mr.  Meynell's  ex- 
cellent magazine  articles.  The  two  latter  are 
written  from  a  Roman  Catholic  point  of  view, 
the  first  from  that  of  an  Anglican,,  and  thus 

*  Letters  and  Correspondence  of  John  Henry  Newman. 
Edited  by  Anne  Mozley,  2  vols.     (Longmans  &  Co.) 

A   Short    Life    of    Cardinal   Newman.     By   J.    S. 
Fletcher.     (Ward  &  Downey.) 

John   Henry  Newman.     By  W.  Meynell.       (Kegan 
Paul  &  Co.) 

137 


138  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

together  they  cover  the  whole  development 
of  Newman's  career. 

It  will  always  be  impossible,  as  it  will  be 
unnecessary,  to  write  or  rewrite  Newman's  life 
as  an  Anglican.  The  Apologia  stands  in  the 
way,  in  which  he  himself  wrote  his  early  life 
once  and  for  all  time.  True,  it  is  only  the 
'  History  of  his  Religious  Opinions.'  But  with 
Newman,  more,  perhaps,  than  with  any  other 
man,  his  religious  opinions  were  his  life. 
Certainly  Miss  Mozley's  work  does  not  profess 
to  retell  the  story  of  the  Apologia.  Her 
volumes  are,  in  fact,  a  huge  appendix  to  that 
work,  containing  the  pieces  justificatives  for  it. 
They  are  full  of  materials,  but  these  do  not 
explain  themselves,  and  at  every  turn  have 
reference  to  the  events  spoken  of  in  the 
Apologia. 

In  large  measure  this  supplement  to  New- 
man's religious  autobiography  is  the  work  of 
Newman  himself.  He  has  throughout  the 
two  volumes  edited  the  letters  and  added  ex- 
planatory words  and  notes,  which  often  read 
very  oddly,  interspersed  as  they  are  in  the 
midst  of  the  text.  Indeed,  it  seems  probable, 
from  the  date  attached  to  many  of  these 
annotations, — 1860, — that  something  like  the 
present  collection  was  intended  to  do  the  work 
that  the  Apologia  itself  did  so  efficiently.  If 
that  be  so,  the  world  owes  a  large  debt  of 


'LETTERS,'  ETC.  139 

gratitude  to  Kingsley  for  having  provoked  the 
more  artistic  presentation  of  the  facts.  It 
would  be  quite  safe  to  prophesy,  if  one  can 
prophesy  about  past  events,  that  Newman's 
name  would  have  far  different  associations  with 
it  if  these  volumes,  or  volumes  similar  to  them, 
had  taken  the  place  of  the  Apologia.  While 
nearly  every  line  of  that  masterpiece  is  of  en- 
trancing interest,  there  is  scarcely  a  single  page 
in  these  two  bulky  volumes  which  anybody 
would  care  to  read  again  for  its  own  sake. 
Part  of  this  unreadableness  is  due  to  the  want 
of  explanatory  and  connecting  matter.  There 
is  not  even  a  list  of  the  celebrated  Tracts. 
The  second  volume  in  particular,  which  is  en- 
tirely devoted  to  the  '  Movement/  is  in  the  main  a 
collection  of  business  letters,  the  business  being 
of  a  highly  ideal  character  no  doubt,  but  still 
its  details  are  in  large  measure  of  the  character 
of  machinery.  Whether  intentionally  or  no, 
almost  everything  of  human  interest  has  been 
eliminated  from  these  pages,  which  are  filled 
throughout  with  controversial  and  theological 
details,  with  scarcely  any  reference  to  the 
feelings  and  aspirations  of  the  workers  in 
the  '  Movement.' 

These  volumes,  then,  must  be  regarded  as  a 
supplement  to  the  Apologia,  and  their  direct 
interest  is  the  additional  light  they  throw  on 
its  pages.  The  main  increase  of  knowledge 


140  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

about  Newman's  life  consists  of  an  auto- 
biographical memoir  running  to  some  seventy- 
six  pages,  and  bringing  his  life-history  up  to 
the  summer  of  1832,  the  year  preceding  the 
beginnings  of  the  '  Movement.'  This  is,  un- 
fortunately, written  in  oblique  narration,  and 
thus  loses  much  of  its  vividness.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  following  passage  : — 

'The  Provost's  butler — to  whom  it  fell  by 
'  usage  to  take  the  news  to  the  fortunate 
f  candidate — made  his  way  to  Mr.  Newman's 
'  lodgings  in  Broad  Street,  and  found  him 
'  playing  the  violin.  This  in  itself  disconcerted 
'  the  messenger,  who  did  not  associate  such  an 
'  accomplishment  with  a  candidateship  for  the 
'  Oriel  Common- Room ;  but  his  perplexity  was 
'  increased  when,  on  his  delivering  what  may 
(  be  supposed  to  have  been  his  usual  form 
'  of  speech  on  such  occasions,  that  "  he  had, 
'  he  feared,  disagreeable  news  to  announce,  viz. 
'  that  Mr.  Newman  was  elected  Fellow  of  Oriel, 
f  and  that  his  immediate  presence  was  re- 
'  quired  there,"  the  person  addressed,  thinking 
'  that  such  language  savoured  of  impertinent 
'  familiarity,  merely  answered,,  e(  Very  well," 
1  and  went  on  fiddling.  This  led  the  man  to 
'  ask  whether,  perhaps,  he  had  mistaken  the 
'  rooms  and  gone  to  the  wrong  person,  to 
1  which  Mr.  Newman  replied  that  it  was  all 
(  right.  But,  as  may  be  imagined,  no  sooner 


'LETTERS/  ETC.  141 

'  had  the  man  left,  than  he  flung  down  his 
'  instrument,  and  dashed  downstairs  with  all 
f  speed  to  Oriel  College.  And  he  recollected, 
'  after  fifty  years,  the  eloquent  faces  and  eager 
'  bows  of  the  tradesmen  and  others  whom  he 
'  met  on  his  way,  who  had  heard  the  news, 
e  and  well  understood  why  he  was  crossing 
(  from  St.  Mary's  to  the  lane  opposite  at  so 
'  extraordinary  a  pace/ 

If  the  reader  will  translate  this  back  into 
fs,  mys,  and  mest  the  gain  of  vividness  will 
be  apparent.  It  is  a  pity  that  Miss  Mozley  did 
not  induce  the  Cardinal  to  reconsider  his  choice 
of  form  for  this  autobiographical  fragment. 
The  gain  such  a  narration  receives  from  being 
put  in  the  first  person  may  be  illustrated 
by  the  following  letter  embedded  in  the 
memoir  : — 

'  On  Wednesday,  April  29,  about  breakfast- 
f  time,  Mr.  Wilson  and  Mr.  Short  called  for 
'  me,  and  asked  me  whether  I  intended  to 
'  stand  for  the  scholarship.  I  answered  that 
'  I  intended  next  year.  However,  they 
c  wished  me  to  stand  this  year,  because  they 
'  would  wish  to  see  me  on  the  foundation.  I 
'  said  I  would  think  of  it.  I  wrote  home  that 
e  day.  How  often  was  my  pen  going  to  tell 
'  the  secret !  but  I  determined  to  surprise  you. 
(  I  told  you  in  a  letter  written  in  the  midst  of 
*  the  examination  that  there  were  five  [candi- 


142  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

'  dates]  of  our  own  [men] ;  did  you  suspect 
'  that  I  was  one  of  the  five  ?  A  Worcester  man 
'  was  very  near  getting  it.  They  made  me 
'  first  do  some  verses ;  then  Latin  translation ; 
'  then  Latin  theme  ;  then  chorus  of  Euripides ; 
c  then  an  English  theme ;  then  some  Plato ; 
'  then  some  Lucretius  ;  then  some  Xenophon ; 
( then  some  Livy.  What  is  more  distressing 
'  than  suspense  ?  At  last  I  was  called  to  the 
'  place  where  they  had  been  voting ;  the  Vice- 
'  Chancellor  [the  President]  said  some  Latin 
'  over  me ;  then  made  a  speech.  The  electors 
( then  shook  hands  with  me,  and  I  immediately 
'  assumed  the  scholar's  gown.  First,  as  I  was 
1  going  out,  before  I  had  changed  my  gown, 
'  one  of  the  candidates  met  me  and  wanted  to 
'  know  if  it  was  decided.  What  was  I  to  say  ? 
'  "  It  was."  "  And  who  has  got  it  ?  "  "  Oh, 
'  an  in-college  man,"  I  said ;  and  I  hurried 
'  away  as  fast  as  I  could.  On  returning  with 
*  my  newly-earned  gown,  I  met  the  whole  set 
f  going  to  their  respective  homes.  I  did  not 
c  know  what  to  do  ;  I  held  my  eyes  down.  By 
1  this  I  am  a  scholar  for  nine  years  at  £60  a 
(  year.  In  which  time,  if  there  be  no  Fellow 
'  of  my  county  (among  the  Fellows),  I  may  be 
'  elected  Fellow,  as  a  regular  thing,  for  five 
'  years  without  taking  orders/ 

These  four  autobiographical  chapters   and 
the  accompanying  inter-chapters  in  which  Miss 


'LETTERS/  ETC.  143 

Mozley  has  given  supplementary  documents 
form  the  most  important  addition  to  our  know- 
ledge of  Newman  and  his  career  contained  in 
these  volumes.  They  tell  us  of  his  early  home 
and  education.  They  give  interesting  details 
like  that  just  given  of  his  college  career. 
Above  all,  they  display  him  in  a  more  secular 
aspect,  so  to  speak,  than  we  are  accustomed  to 
regard  him.  As  he  himself  informs  us,  it  was 
only  on  his  election  to  the  Oriel  Fellowship 
in  1822  that  the  possibility  of  a  theological 
career  occurred  to  him.  Besides  this  they 
give  glimpses  of  the  charming  character  of  his 
sister,  Mary,  whose  loss  affected  him  so  deeply. 
The  fragments  of  her  letters  have  a  girlish 
charm  that  lightens  the  somewhat  gloomy  and 
austere  tone  of  the  book,  so  rarely  relieved  by 
touches  of  humour  from  Newman  or  his  corre- 
spondents, the  only  exceptions  being  Keble  and 
Hurrell  Froude. 

A  large  part  of  the  first  volume  is  taken  up 
by  Newman's  impressions  during  his  grand 
tour  with  the  Froudes  in  1832-33.  Much  of 
this  is  not  of  extraordinary  interest,  and  might 
have  been  well  omitted.  Yet  it  is  quite  true 
— and  this  is  one  of  the  main  points  brought 
out  in  this  work — that  the  solitary  travel  in 
Sicily  and  the  fever  that  overtook  him  there 
formed  the  crisis  in  Newman's  life.  His  escape 
from  death  might  easily  seem  miraculous  and 


144  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

a  special  sign  of  grace  to  so  ardent  a  believer. 
But  for  the  untiring  attention  of  his  courier, 
Gennaro,  his  life  would  have  paid  the  penalty 
of  a  somewhat  hazardous  exploit.  His  feeling 
of  special  mission  was  intensified  by  the  narrow 
escape  from  death. 

The  celebrated  hymn  '  Lead,  kindly  Light/ 
turns  out  to  be  the  exact  expression  of  the  deep 
feelings  aroused  by  his  Sicilian  experience ;  it 
was  written,  as  is  well  known,  on  his  voyage 
to  Marseilles  during  his  convalescence.  Almost 
every  expression  has  a  personal  reference  :  '  I 
am  far  from  home/  '  those  angel  faces '  (his 
father  and  sister  Mary),  '  Pride  ruled  my  will ' 
referred  to  the  strong  feeling  Newman  had  that 
his  Sicilian  illness  was  a  punishment  for  his 
self-will.  Even  *  the  moor  and  fen,  crag  and 
torrent/  were  probably  the  reflex  of  the  deep 
impression  Sicilian  scenery  had  made  upon 
him.  If  one  could  generalise  from  a  single 
example — and  one  often  does  so  generalise 
in  the  first  instance — it  might  seem  that  the 
popular  effect  of  a  poem  depends  on  the 
intensity  of  personal  feeling  with  which  it  is 
written.  A  poem's  impressiveness,  one  might 
say,  depends  on  the  number  of  heart's  drops 
instilled  into  it. 

On  this  Sicilian  illness  there  is  a  remarkable 
paper  of  Newman's  in  this  volume  which  is 
almost  morbid  in  the  detail  with  which  it 


f  LETTERS/  ETC.  145 

enters  into  each  phase  of  the  fever.  Incident- 
ally it  contains  a  piece  of  self-portraiture,  which 
is  perhaps,  taking  all  things  together,  the  most 
striking  thing  in  these  volumes : — 

'  Indeed,  this  is  how  I  look  on  myself;  very 
(  much  (as  the  illustration  goes)  as  a  pane  of 
'  glass,  which  transmits  heat,  being  cold  itself. 
'  I  have  a  vivid  perception  of  the  consequences 
'  of  certain  admitted  principles,  have  a  con- 
'  siderable  intellectual  capacity  of  drawing  them 

*  out,  have  the  refinement  to  admire  them,  and 
(  a  rhetorical  or  histrionic  power  to  represent 
'  them ;  and,  having  no  great  (i.e.  no  vivid)  love 
'  of  this  world,  whether   riches,  honours,   or 
'  anything  else,  and  some  firmness  and  natural 
'  dignity  of  character,  take  the  profession  of 
'  them  upon  me,  as  I  might  sing  a  tune  which 
'  I  liked — loving  the  Truth,  but  not  possessing 
( it,  for  I  believe  myself  at  heart  to  be  nearly 
'  hollow,  i.e.  with  little  love,  little  self-denial. 
<  I  believe  I  have  some  faith,  that  is  all ;  and, 
'  as  to  my  sins,  they  need  my  possessing  no 
'  little  amount  of  faith  to  set  against  them  and 

•  gain  their  remission.     By-the-bye,  this  state- 
'  ment  will  account  for  it,  how  I  can  preach  the 
'  Truth  without  thinking  much  of  myself/ 

It  must  be  remembered  that  this  was 
written  in  a  moment  of  self-depreciation,  sin- 
cere enough,  but  rather  tending  to  exaggerate 
demerits  and  failings.  But  external  evidence 


146  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

and  the  general  impression  made  by  Newman 
on  his  contemporaries  show  that  these  lines 
are  more  truthful  than  such  self-portraiture 
usually  is.  With  regard  to  his  coolness  there 
is  a  confirmatory  passage  in  a  letter  in  the 
second  volume,  where  he  describes  in  an 
amusing  way  his  meeting  Arnold — the  chief 
representative  of  '  Liberalism  '  in  the  Church 
— in  the  Oriel  Common-Room  : — 

'  I  was  most  absolutely  cool,  or  rather  calm 
'  and  unconcerned,  all  through  the  meeting 
'  from  beginning  to  end ;  but  I  don't  know 
'  whether  you  have  seen  me  enough  in  such 
'  situations  to  know  (what  I  really  believe  is 
'  not  any  affectation  at  all  on  my  part ;  I  am 
'  not  at  all  conscious  of  any  such  thing,  though 
'  people  would  think  it)  that  I  seem,  if  you 
'  will  let  me  say  it,  to  put  on  a  very  simple, 
'  innocent,  and  modest  manner.  I  sometimes 
'  laugh  at  myself,  and  at  the  absurdities  which 
'  result  from  it ;  but  really  I  cannot  help  it, 
'  and  I  really  do  believe  it  to  be  genuine.  On 
'  one  occasion  in  the  course  of  our  conversation 
'  I  actually  blushed  high  at  some  mistake  I 
'  made,  and  yet  on  the  whole  I  am  quite 
(  collected.  Now,  are  you  not  amused  at  all 
'  this  ?  or  ought  not  I  to  blush  now  ?  I  never 
'  said  a  word  of  all  this  about  myself  to  any 
'  one  in  my  life  before ;  though,  perhaps,  that 
'  does  not  mend  the  matter  that  I  should  say 
'  it  now.' 


'LETTERS/  ETC.  147 

Both  passages  concur  in  giving  an  impres- 
sion of  cool  dispassionateness  that  contrasts 
with  some  of  the  impassioned  language  he 
used  in  self-defence  against  Kingsley  and  in 
his  newspaper  letters.  Both  Mr.  Fletcher 
and  Mr.  Meynell  remark  that  this  passion  was 
simulated  and  calculated  on  the  part  of  New- 
man, who  defended  it  on  the  plausible  ground 
that  the  British  public  will  never  believe  a 
man  is  in  earnest  unless  he  loses,  or  seems  to 
lose,  his  temper. 

The  end  of  the  first  volume  and  the  whole 
of  the  second  are  entirely  taken  up  with 
letters  and  documents  relating  to  the  '  Move- 
ment' which  gave  new  life  to  the  Anglican 
Church,  and  led  the  leader  of  it  to  the  Roman 
fold.  It  clearly  forms  the  raw  material — the 
very  raw  material — out  of  which  Newman 
drew  up  his  own  lucid  account,  and  it  affords 
explicit  information  on  every  phase  and  diva- 
gation of  Tractarianism  in  its  formative  period. 
But  its  very  minuteness  renders  it  practically 
unreadable;  there  is  little  or  no  connecting 
narrative — only  a  few  '  Chronological  Notes ' 
of  Newman's  which  assume  in  the  reader  a 
minute  acquaintance  with  every  turn  of  events 
in  the  long  struggle.  It  thus  affords  a  mine 
of  evidence  for  the  Oxford  Movement,  but 
its  riches  have  to  be  dug  for,  and  it  is  only  to 
be  used  as  a  supplement  to  the  Apologia  or 
to  a  book  like  that  of  Dean  Church. 


148  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

That  these  documents  should  confirm  the 
Apologia  is  comprehensible  enough,  for  they 
were  mostly  in  Newman's  hands  when  he 
wrote  it,  and  have  practically  been  edited  by 
him  before  now  being  given  to  the  world. 
Here  and  there  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  edi- 
torial motive  :  thus  the  note  on  vol.  i.  p.  476, 
'  First  mention  of  Pusey's  name/  and  the 
entries  from  Newman's  Journal,  vol.  ii.  p.  24, 
giving  details  of  Pusey's  movements,  were 
clearly  intended  to  dissociate  Pusey's  name 
from  the  '  Movement/  Yet  it  remains  to  be 
proved  whether  the  impetus  and  force  given 
to  it  by  Pusey's  social  position  were  not  vital 
to  the  development  of  the  '  Movement/  As 
Mr.  Meynell  points  out,  it  was  Newman's 
family  connections,  or  rather  want  of  them, 
that  threw  the  direction  of  the  '  Movement ' 
into  Pusey's  hands,  and  gave  rise  to  the 
popular  epithet  '  Puseyite.'  These  are,  how- 
ever, almost  the  only  instances  of  pettiness  to 
be  observed  in  these  volumes,  unless  the 
reference  to  Golightly,  vol.  i.  p.  165  ('  he  is 
better  to  know  than  to  see '),  can  be  regarded 
as  such.  But  the  intense  minuteness  in 
personal  details  shows  an  amount  of  self-will 
and  self-opinion  in  Newman  which  is  extra- 
ordinary in  a  man  of  such  genuine  modesty. 

The  total  impression  given  by  the  details 
of  the  '  Movement '  confirms  the  general  idea 


'  LETTERS/  ETC.  149 

that  has  long  been  current.  It  was  an 
attempt  to  transfer  the  seriousness  of  Evan- 
gelicalism to  the  side  of  the  High  Church. 
In  a  significant  passage  (vol.  i.  p.  277)  Go- 
lightly  declared  that  the  only  young  men  in 
whom  there  was  true  seriousness  were  Cal- 
vinistic  in  tone.  Newman  had  been  trained 
Calvinistically,  and  was  thus  adapted  by  his 
training  to  make  the  required  transition  from 
the  Low  to  the  High  Church.  As  early  as 
1830  T.  Mozley  recognised  his  suitability  as 
leader  of  such  a  movement.  Theologically 
and  technically  speaking,  Newman  and  his 
followers  made  earnest,  as  the  Germans  say, 
with  the  conception  of  the  Apostolical  Succes- 
sion and  all  that  it  implies :  *  Apostolical/ 
indeed,  becomes  a  cant  word  in  these  letters  to 
indicate  the  aims  of  the  party.  Newman  was 
thus,  in  Heine's  phrase,  though  not  in  Heine's 
sense,  a  Knight  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
valiantly  he  fought  the  fight  of  the  Faith. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  second  volume 
Newman's  development  had  reached  a  stage 
when  Rome  loomed  in  the  distance  as  the 
inevitable  goal  of  his  theological  thinking. 
It  will  come  as  a  surprise  to  most  people 
that  this  stage  was  reached  much  earlier 
than  the  final  step  would  lead  one  to  imagine. 
At  first,  indeed,  he  was  unconscious  of  the 
direction  of  his  steps ;  he  did  not  know  where 


150  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

he  was  leading  his  followers,  because  he  did 
not  know  how  far  he  was  going  himself.  So 
far  he  could  honestly  deny  the  imputation 
that  he  was  a  Romanist  in  disguise  while 
seemingly  fighting  for  a  via  media  between 
Anglicanism  and  Romanism.  But  it  appears 
from  a  touching  series  of  letters  between  his 
sister  and  himself  that  he  was  practically  a 
Romanist  in  disguise  for  some  years — probably 
as  many  as  four — before  he  took  the  final 
step.  It  is  curious  that  his  consciousness  of 
being  drawn  towards  Rome  should  have  coin- 
cided in  point  of  time  with  the  rejection  by 
the  Anglican  Church,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
by  his  own  party,  of  the  doctrines  of  '  Tract 
No.  xc.'  Here  again  we  seem  to  have 
glimpses  of  quasi-personal  motives  in  what 
appear  to  be  doctrinal  developments  that 
clash  with  our  preconceived  notions  of  his 
humility  and  disinterestedness  in  the  highest 
sense  of  the  word. 

There  is  one  thing  that  comes  out  in  these 
letters  that  is  explanatory  of  much.  He  was 
a  theologian,  or  rather  a  theological  thinker, 
but  he  was  not,  comparatively  speaking,  a 
theological  scholar  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
can  apply  that  term  to  Dollinger  or  even  to 
Pusey.  It  is  curious  to  find  a  thinker  who 
laid  such  absolute  stress  on  authority  in  the 
living  Church,  and  on  development  in  the 


<  LETTERS/  ETC.  161 

Church  of  the  past,  knowing  so  little  about 
the  actual  facts  of  that  development.  His- 
torical criticism  in  the  field  of  theology  was 
not  born  in  his  time,  above  all  in  England, 
and  there  is  an  utter  absence  of  any  appeal 
to  it  in  these  volumes. 

Altogether  these  letters  do  not  impress  one 
with  very  high  ideas  of  the  intellect  of  the 
Tractarians.  They  all  seem  too  deeply  im- 
mersed in  the  practical  details  of  their  schemes. 
There  is  scarcely  any  discussion  of  principles, 
or  even  any  distinct  consciousness  of  the 
principles  to  be  fought  for.  Resistance  to 
'  Liberalism '  in  its  inroads  on  the  Church  is 
a  more  prominent  motive,  it  would  seem, 
than  any  distinct  conception  of  the  ideals 
which  they  desired  to  realise.  Even  in 
Newman  there  is  too  much  immersion  in 
detail,  and  there  is  far  too  little  of  humanism 
in  his  letters  to  make  them  interesting.  It 
is  the  e  Movement,'  the  '  Movement/  and 
still  again  the  '  Movement.'  Of  life,  of  art, 
except  stray  references  to  music,  of  letters, 
there  is  scarcely  anything  throughout  these 
thousand  pages.  It  is  possible  that  this  was 
designed  by  the  editor  and  by  the  Cardinal, 
but  the  result  has  been  to  make  these  volumes 
terribly  technical  and  monotonous. 

The  two  remaining  books  on  our  list  deal 
more  fully  with  the  Cardinal's  Catholic  life. 


152  JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN 

In  one  way  this  was  a  failure,  his  Cardinal- 
deaconship  being  a  somewhat  empty  honour, 
and  he  never  acquired  any  real  influence  in 
his  adopted  Church,  such  as  has  been  wielded 
by  the  rival  English  Cardinal.  It  is,  indeed, 
curious  to  reflect  that  Newman's  theological 
thoughts  on  the  necessary  development  of 
religious  truth  should  have  led  him  into  the 
fold  of  the  Church  which  practically  negatives 
the  possibility  of  such  development.  There 
is  clearly  no  field  in  her  economy  for  the 
theological  thinker;  the  Pope's  infallibility 
renders  such  efforts  nugatory.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  late 
Cardinal's  work  as  a  literary  artist  was  mainly 
performed  in  his  Catholic  period.  His  novels, 
the  Dream  of  Gerontius,  the  Idea  of  a  Uni- 
versity, the  Grammar  of  Assent,  even  the 
Apologia  itself,  were  all  products  of  his 
Catholic  period.  Except  the  Lyra  and  the 
sermons — but  what  an  exception  is  there ! — 
the  chief  works  by  which  he  will  be  remem- 
bered were  written  within  the  Church  of  his 
adoption.  And  his  life  in  that  Church,  when 
it  comes  to  be  told,  must  surely  be  more  full 
of  human  and  natural  interest  than  the  some- 
what morbid  and  gloomy  period  that  closed 
in  1845. 


ALFRED   TENNYSON 

October  6,  1892 


ALFRED   TENNYSON 

(HE  greatest  poetic  artist  of  the 
English  -  speaking  race  has 
passed  away.  There  need  be 
no  sadness  of  farewell  at  such  a 
close  to  such  a  career.  To  have 
passed  a  long  life  in  undivided  devotion  to 
the  noblest  of  the  arts,  to  have  grown  in 
mastery  of  it  almost  to  the  end,  to  have  be- 
come in  very  deed  the  voice  of  the  nation 
he  loved  so  well:  this  has  been  surely  the 
supreme  lot.  It  is  characteristic  that  almost 
the  only  trouble  of  his  later  years  was  the 
intrusive  reverence  of  his  fellow-countrymen, 
a  burden  that  might  have  been  borne  with 
somewhat  more  of  patience  and  geniality. 
But  there  was  a  touch  of  the  aristocrat  about 
Tennyson  that  chimed  in  well  with  the  dignity 
of  his  art,  and  completes  the  picture  of  the 
vales  sacer,  the  consecrated  voice  of  a  mighty 
people,  brooding  in  self-chosen  isolation  upon 
the  things  of  highest  import. 

That  is  not  the  figure  which  Tennyson  pre- 
155 


156  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

sents  on  his  first  appearance  in  the  arena 
where  he  was  to  outstrip  all  rivals.  His  Keep- 
sake period  lasted  long.  Looking  back,  we 
can  indeed  discern  in  the  volume  of  1842 — in 
the  Ulysses,  in  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  in  The  Two 
Voices — the  promise  of  nearly  all  that  was  to 
come.  But  these  were  imbedded  in  much 
that  was  pretty  but  petty,  Wordsworthian 
idylls  too  long  drawn  out,  Lords  of  Burleigh 
and  Ladies  Clare,  that  half  justified  the  early 
scoffers,  Wilson  and  the  rest.  Even  the 
melody,  though  sweet  and  clear,  was  thin  and 
at  times  tinkling.  Grace,  not  force  or  dignity, 
was  the  characteristic  up  to  and  including  The 
Princess  of  1847,  the  most  graceful  poem  of 
such  length  in  the  language.  The  Rape  of  the 
Lock,  the  only  other  poem  in  English  literature 
that  can  be  compared  with  it,  is  more  witty 
than  graceful. 

Yet  all  the  while  the  master  was  growing  in 
command  over  his  instrument.  Even  in  the 
earlier  volumes  of  1830  and  1832  there  were 
premonitions  of  the  almost  flawless  workman- 
ship in  words  which  was  to  be  the  cachet  of 
Tennyson's  style.  They  say  that  men's  minds 
ossify  after  forty.  Certainly  there  comes  to 
languages  growing  old  a  stage  of  ossification, 
when  new  collocations  of  words  become  in- 
creasingly difficult  and  the  conventional  epithet 
is  stereotyped  and  polarised.  In  the  history 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  157 

of  English  style,  in  prose  indirectly  as  directly 
in  poetry,  that  stage  of  ossification  was  arrested 
by  Tennyson.  He  is  the  great  Master  of  the 
Epithet  in  our  language.  He  revived  old 
words  like  'marish,'  he  invented  new  ones 
like  'Ionian.'  He  seems  to  have  taken 
infinite  care  over  the  filing  of  his  phrases.  A 
careful  study  of  the  variae  lectiones  of  his  suc- 
cessive editions  is  a  liberal  education  in  poetic 
form,  and  there  was  probably  much  greater 
modification  before  anything  of  his  appeared 
in  print  at  all.  The  earlier  edition  of  the 
celebrated  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade  is  of 
great  interest  in  this  connection. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  poet  with  whom 
he  is  to  be  affiliated  in  the  history  of  English 
poetry,  regarded  simply  as  an  art,  is,  of  all 
poets  in  the  world,  Pope.  It  was  Pope's  aim, 
he  himself  avowed,  to  make  English  poetry 
correct  in  form.  It  was  Tennyson's  function 
to  bring  back  to  English  verse  that  care  for 
form  which  had  disappeared  from  it  when  he 
began  to  write.  During  his  formative  period, 
the  titular  head  of  English  poetry  was  Robert 
Southey,  who  published  amorphous  masses 
which  he  called  poems,  while  Wordsworth  was 
acting  up  to  a  theory  of  poetry  which  implied 
that  form  was  of  no  consequence.  Tennyson 
rescued  English  poetry  from  these  tendencies. 
No  wonder  that  his  influence  has  been  the 


158  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

dominant  one  among  all  but  a  few.  As  in  the 
eighteenth  century  every  poetaster  aped  Pope, 
so  in  the  nineteenth  every  English  minor  poet 
has  followed  in  the  wake  of  Tennyson. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  loving 
care  for  form  was  due  to  his  University  educa- 
tion on  the  old  Trinity  lines.  Tennyson  is  of 
the  classical  order  of  poets  in  a  double  sense. 
There  are  always  poets  learned  in  their  art  who 
love  to  reproduce  and  recall  the  best  work  of 
their  predecessors  in  their  own  or  in  the  classi- 
cal languages:  Milton  and  Gray  are  of  this 
class.  There  are  poets,  again,  who  preserve 
in  their  lines  the  reserve,  the  dignity,  the 
/cat/aos  of  the  great  poets  of  antiquity,  even 
though  they  may  not  be  intimately  acquainted 
with  them :  Collins  and  Keats  are  classical  in 
this  sense.  Tennyson  was  classical  in  both 
ways  :  he  has  antique  reserve,  he  is  full  of  re- 
miniscences. It  is  this  fact  that  has  made  the 
comparison  to  Virgil  or  to  Theocritus  so  natural, 
yet  so  misleading.  The  reference  to  Theo- 
critus might  pass  for  one  side  of  his  work, 
and  that  the  least  important.  But  Tennyson 
had  no  such  theme  as  the  Majeslas  Romae 
of  the  great  Mantuan  before  him :  no 
national-religious  sanction  to  his  subject,  no 
haunting  sense  of  a  world -theme  in  his 
words. 

There  is,  indeed,  in  Tennyson's  first  period, 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  159 

which  we  are  at  present  considering,  no  haunt- 
ing sense  of  anything.  There  is  none  of  the 
magic,  the  mystical  charm  of  Coleridge  or  of 
Rossetti  in  his  lines.  They  are  as  clear  cut  as 
crystal,  and  as  cold.  One  feels  no  rush  of 
impetuous  emotion  behind  the  words,  no  un- 
controllable outburst  of  imaginative  force. 
Yet  it  is  this  that  gives  us  the  sense  of  a  great 
poet,  a  vision  of  unknown  vistas  of  the  poet- 
soul  flashing  through  the  verse.  Tennyson  in 
his  first  period  knows  exactly  what  he  wants 
to  say,  and  says  it  in  the  best  way.  This  is 
the  side  of  him  that  has  made  him  popular, 
and  contrasts  so  favourably  with  the  obscurity 
and  incoherence  of  many  of  his  compeers. 
Yet  it  has  its  weakness  in  the  want  of  depth, 
want  of  soul-tone  in  his  earlier  work. 

Akin  to  this  clear-cut  form  was  the  accuracy 
and  minuteness  of  observation  which  made 
him  so  successful  a  painter  of  domesticated 
Nature.  His  achievements  in  this  direction 
may  have  been  over-estimated.  He  is  not 
immaculate ;  the  songster  nightingale  is  always/ 
with  him,  the  female,  not  the  male,  as  it  is  in 
Nature  :  he  was  probably  misled  by  the  myth 
of  Philomela.  But  the  minuteness  and  inde- 
pendence of  his  powers  of  observation  are 
acknowledged  on  all  hands,  and  go  naturally 
with  the  clear  vision  of  the  artist  in  words. 
Yet  here'again  the  result  is  to  impair  the  true 


160  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

poetic  effect,  except  of  course  in  the  purely 
landscape  poems,  where  this  power  gave  him 
an  advantage  over  every  predecessor  in  that 
genre  of  poetry.  Nature  in  romantic  or  pas- 
sionate poetry  must  be  used  as  a  'pathetic 
fallacy ' — to  use  Mr.  Ruskin's  phrase — in  order 
to  give  the  Stimmung  to  the  emotions  the  poet 
wishes  to  arouse.  Minute  attention  to  detail 
diverts  the  emotion,  and  at  best  produces  only 
a  decorative  effect. 

The  danger  was  that  this  mastery  of  form 
and  clearness  of  vision  would  lead  to  mere 
daintiness,  might  even  result  in  the  sugared 
elegance  of  vers  de  societe.  Tennyson  was 
saved  from  this  by  the  great  chastening  sorrow 
of  his  life.  While  he  was  training  himself  as 
a  poetic  artist  with  metrical  experiments  and 
coinages  of  five-word  phrases  enshrining  his 
observations  of  Nature,  he  was  also  elaborating 
his  masterpiece,  In  Memoriam.  For  twice  the 
Horatian  period  he  kept  this  series  of  poem- 
sequences  by  him,  adding,  revising,  inserting, 
and  rejecting,  till  the  whole  grew  to  a  moving 
series  of  pictures  of  a  soul's  development,  from 
the  first  overwhelming  stroke  till  the  final  re- 
conciliation of  sorrow  and  hope.  Injustice  is 
done  to  Tennyson  in  thinking  of  the  In 
Memoriam  as  one  outburst  written  in  somewhat 
cold  blood  immediately  after  Hallam's  death. 
He  is  careful  to  mark  the  stages  of  his  grief. 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  161 

In  one  case  we  can  even  date  a  canto  at  least 
thirteen  years  later  than  the  death  of  Arthur 
Hallam.  When  the  poet  speaks  of  science 
charming  her  secret  from  the  latest  moon, 
there  is  little  doubt  he  is  referring  to  the  dis- 
covery of  Neptune  in  1 846 ;  yet  this  occurs  in 
one  of  the  earlier  sections  of  the  poem.  The 
dangers  involved  in  a  philosophical  poem  were 
overcome  by  putting  the  problem  in  a  concrete 
shape.  The  theology  of  the  poem  was  from 
Rugby:  it  is  the  voice  of  the  Broad  Church 
clear,  yet  somewhat  thin,  and  wanting  in  the 
higher  imagination.  The  curious  anticipations 
of  Darwinism  which  occur  so  frequently  in  it 
were  due  to  the  interest  excited  by  Chambers' s 
Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of  Creation, 
which  appeared  in  1844,  and  enable  us  to  see 
how  late  these  sections  of  the  poem  were 
added.  The  felicities  of  phrase  with  which  it 
abounds  cause  it  to  rank  as  one  of  the  best 
known  poems  in  the  language,  and  the  one 
with  which  the  name  of  Tennyson  will  be  in- 
dissolubly  connected.  Here,,  again,  the  com- 
parison with  Pope  is  justified.  The  only  other 
long  philosophical  poem  in  the  language  of 
any  real  literary  merit  is  his  Essay  on  Man. 

Maud  is  even  a  greater  surprise  when  com- 
pared with  the  Tennyson  of  the  first  period. 
There  is  no  lack  here  of  impetuous  emotion, 
no  cold  decorative  work.     There   is   even   a 
L 


162  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

touch  of  hysteria  in  the  highly  wrought  passion. 
The  poet,  under  Carlyle's  influence,  broke  here 
with  Manchesterthum :  the  sword  is  the  voice 
of  God,  as  a  later  poet  has  put  it.  There  was 
in  Maud  an  indication  of  emotional  power,  as 
in  In  Memoriam  there  was  an  unexpected  proof 
of  intellectual  power,  in  one  who  had  hitherto 
seemed  only  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day. 
To  the  poet  of  In  Memoriam  and  of  Maud 
there  seemed  no  height  too  high,  no  poetic 
exploit  too  ambitious. 

Unhappily,  the  poet's  ambition  turned  for 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  into  spheres  of 
poetic  art  where  his  powers,  great  as  they 
were,  were  inadequate.  He  was  not  an  epic 
poet,  he  was  not  a  dramatic  poet ;  yet  he 
devoted  his  forces  at  their  highest  capacity  to 
epic,  to  drama.  An  epic  is  the  presentation 
of  a  national  myth  regarded  as  sacred :  the 
Paradise  Lost  answers  to  this  description,  the 
Idylls  of  the  King  do  not.  Arthur  has  never 
been  a  national  hero :  he  is  mainly  the  out- 
come of  a  long  series  of  literary  creation ;  the 
Idylls  could  at  best  claim  only  to  be  a  literary 
epic,  not  a  national  one.  But  the  temper 
required  for  the  literary  epic  is  the  romantic, 
not  the  classical  spirit.  There  must  be  some- 
thing of  the  Viking  delight  in  battle,  a  tone  of 
Xa/o/>«/,  not  to  mention  a  certain  sensuous 
glory,  surrounding  the  passion  of  the  epic. 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  163 

Such  ideals  are  different  from  the  Rugby  ones, 
which  Tennyson  represents  in  literature. 
Attempts  have  been  made  to  defend  the  Idylls 
from  the  lack  of  epic  interest  by  claiming  them 
as  an  allegory  of  the  struggle  of  man's  soul 
through  life.  But  the  defence  is  really  a 
verdict  against  the  poet.  The  medium  that 
carries  the  allegory  must  be  of  interest  on  its 
own  account,  as  in  the  Faerie  Queene,  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  Faust,  or  Dr.  Jekyll,  or  else  where  is 
the  advantage  of  the  allegorical  mode  of  treat- 
ment ? 

It  is  scarcely  denied  that  Tennyson  trans- 
formed the  tone  of  his  originals,  of  the 
Mabinogion  and  the  Morte  d' Arthur.  The 
unworthy  gibe  that  the  Morte  d' Arthur  of 
Tennyson  was  a  Morte  d' Albert  was  the  more 
unfair,  as  the  Morte  d' Arthur  is  the  least  un- 
successful of  the  series,  and  departs  least  from 
the  original.  But  the  whole  conception  of 
Guinevere,  and  still  more  of  Vivien,  was  that 
of  the  nineteenth-century  English  gentleman, 
and  something  in  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Podsnap. 
The  control  of  passion,  which  is  so  character- 
istic a  part  of  the  Rugby  ideal,  has  its  noble 
side,  but  it  has  a  narrowing  effect  on  the  artist 
when  dealing  with  passionate  subjects.  Along 
with  it  goes  a  want  of  humour,  conspicuous 
alike  in  Tennyson  and  in  Wordsworth.  The 
Northern  Farmer  is  almost  the  sole  exception 


164  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

to  the  high  seriousness  of  his  work.  The  isola- 
tion of  the  poet  must  have  contributed  to  this 
defect :  one  cannot  keep  one's-self  in  cotton 
wool  with  impunity. 

The  epic  period,  1860-1872,  was  succeeded 
by  a  dramatic  decade  even  more  damaging  for 
his  reputation.  It  is  not  merely  that  the 
dramas  were  unsuited  for  the  stage ;  their 
fatal  defect  was  that  they  were  not  dramatic. 
There  is  more  dramatic  force,  for  example, 
in  the  closing  lines  of  Lucretius  than  in  the 
whole  of  the  dramas  put  together.  It  is  use- 
less to  note  that  the  character  of  Henry  n.,  or 
of  Mary,  is  according  to  the  Records  :  dramas 
are  not  histories.  Tennyson  may  have  con- 
ceived his  characters  aright  according  to  Stubbs 
or  to  Froude;  he  has  not  presented  them 
dramatically.  Here,  again,  as  in  the  epic 
series,  one  felt  the  absence  of  the  creative 
rush,  the  sense  of  a  personality  behind  the 
artistic  work,  and  greater  than  it.  The  great 
poet  is  himself  greater  than  his  work;  the 
sense  of  easy  mastery  of  their  materials  is  given 
by  men  like  Shakespeare  or  Homer.  Tenny- 
son's epic  and  dramatic  studies  leave  a  sense 
of  the  poet's  struggle  with  an  uncongenial 
task.  Even  the  poet's  mastery  of  form  had 
declined.  There  are  indeed  many  passages  in 
the  Idylls  of  the  King,  especially  in  The  Passing 
of  Arthur  and  the  Guinevere,  which,  by  their 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  165 

mere  verbal  beauty,  redeem  the  poems  from 
insignificance.  There  are  scarcely  any  in  the 
dramas — apart  from  the  lyrical  interludes — 
which  are  either  worthy  of  their  setting  or 
worthy  of  being  taken  out  of  their  setting. 

I  can  well  remember  the  disastrous  effect 
the  epic  and  dramatic  periods  had  on  Tenny- 
son's reputation  during  the  '  seventies/  We 
that  were  interested  in  the  future  of  English 
letters  had  lost  all  hope  in  Tennyson :  our 
eyes  were  turned  to  Rossetti  and  Mr.  Swin- 
burne. It  became  the  fashion  to  think  and 
speak  slightingly  of  the  great  master,  who  was 
all  the  while  maturing  to  a  final  creative  out- 
burst which  was  to  raise  him  far  above  any 
contemporary,  far  above  most  of  his  prede- 
cessors in  English  song,  except  the  two  greatest 
names  of  all.  The  fifth  act  of  the  drama  of 
Tennyson's  poetic  career  fulfils  all,  and  more 
than  all,  the  promise  of  the  earlier  ones. 

Since  Sophocles  there  has  been  nothing  in 
all  literature  like  that  St.  Martin's  summer  of 
Tennyson's  muse.  The  old  age  of  Goethe, 
which  seems  at  first  sight  a  parallel,  was  de- 
voted to  science ;  the  vital  portions  of  the 
second  part  of  Faust  were  written  years  before 
they  were  published.  The  vigour  and  virility 
of  the  volume  of  Ballads,  the  Teiresias  volume, 
the  New  Locksley  Hall,  and  the  Demeter  volume 
were  astounding :  Rizpaht  Fastness,  the  Ballad 


166  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

of  the  Revenge,  Teiresias,  to  mention  some  of 
the  more  striking,  were  achievements  of  the 
first  order  in  poetic  force.  There  was  no  want 
of  the  rush  of  inspiration  behind  the  verse; 
there  was  rugged  vigour,  sublime  incoherence. 
The  metrical  forms  could  no  longer  bear  the 
fulness  of  the  poetic  fervour.  There  was  no 
over-niceness  of  precision ;  even  the  metre  had 
grown  less  smooth,  more  Michalangelesque. 
It  was  as  if  the  frost  of  eld  was  sending  spikes 
of  ice  across  the  surface  of  the  stream  of  verse. 
Thus,  in  the  Crossing  of  the  Bar,  which  was  so 
mercilessly  reiterated  immediately  after  the 
poet's  death,  the  third  line  of  each  stanza  is 
wanting  in  the  old  smoothness  and  ring ;  yet 
it  is  the  more  effective  for  that.  The  rhythm 
is  more  complex,  the  harmony  richer.  This 
was  the  more  needed,  as  Tennyson  was  never 
very  rich  in  rhymes,  the  other  expedient  for 
giving  mellowness  to  English  verse.  It  was 
perhaps  from  a  sense  of  this  defect  that  he 
resorted  so  frequently  and  with  such  effect  to 
alliteration. 

It  is  in  the  Tennyson  of  these  later  days 
that  we  recognise  the  Master — the  great  poet- 
soul  looming  behind  the  poem,  and  greater 
than  it.  He  rises  at  times  to  an  almost  pro- 
phetic strain.  He  had  always  been  English  of 
the  English ;  if  this  had  given  him  some 
narrowness  of  vision  and  sympathy,  it  gave 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  167 

him  in  later  years  the  intensity  which  seems 
impossible  without  some  narrowness.  He  had 
revived  for  us  the  half-forgotten  sentiment  of 
patriotism.  Even  throughout  the  pseudo- 
cosmopolitanism  of  the  Manchester  period  of 
recent  history  he  was  always  for  England  first. 
'  Love  thou  thy  land  ! '  was  his  refrain  through- 
out, and  he  set  the  example  himself.  He  has 
been  the  one  Laureate  that  was  really  the 
nation's  voice.  If  his  utterances  as  Laureate 
— except  perhaps  the  Wellington  Ode — do  not 
take  a  foremost  place  among  his  compositions, 
that  is  simply  because  the  English  nation 
during  his  laureateship  has  been  happy  in 
having  no  dramatic  episodes  in  its  history. 
You  cannot  be  strikingly  effective  in  dealing 
with  a  slow  and  unconscious  development. 

It  cannot  be  said  of  Tennyson  that  he  has 
been  a  great  spiritual  force  in  the  national 
development  of  the  last  half-century.  The 
Princess  may  have  aided  the  movement  for  the 
higher  education  of  women,  though  it  is  in 
essence  a  protest  against  it.  In  Memoriam  has 
liberalised  theology,  and  been  to  the  Broad 
Church  movement  what  The  Christian  Year 
has  been  to  the  High  Church.  But  where  is 
the  Broad  Church  now  ?  Tennyson  was,  on 
the  whole,  adverse  to  evolution,  which  has 
been  almost  an  instinct  in  English  speculation 
for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  So  far  as  he 


168  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

was  the  voice  of  his  age  in  speculative  matters, 
he  only  represented  the  thought  of  the '  sixties.' 
Maud  may  have  helped  to  free  England  from 
the  shackles  of  Manchesterthum.  His  later 
incursions  into  polemics,  In  the  Children's 
Hospital  and  the  unfortunate  Promise  of  May, 
were  best  forgotten.  Direct  didacticism  is 
likely  at  all  times  to  lead  to  priggishness.  The 
teaching  of  the  true  poet  is  indirect — a  sort  of 
induction  of  the  poetic  temper  and  attitude, 
far  more  subtle  and  penetrating  in  its  effects 
than  all  your  direct  teaching.  The  pictures  of 
still  and  cleanly  English  life  in  the  earlier 
idylls,  of  sturdy  heroism  in  the  ballads,  even 
the  somewhat  namby-pamby  chivalry  of  the 
epical  Idylls — these  were  the  teachings  of 
Tennyson,  so  far  as  he  was  a  teacher.  It  is 
noteworthy  that,  in  almost  all  these  aspects, 
he  was  carrying  on  the  tradition  of  his  prede- 
cessor on  the  poetic  throne. 

There  were  so  many  Tennysons  that  one 
would  never  have  done  in  attempting  to  deal 
with  all  sides  of  his  multifarious  poetic  activity. 
But  throughout  the  five  acts  of  his  poetic  life 
there  is  one  common  element  that  binds  them 
into  an  organic  unity.  His  lyrics  were  as 
sweet  last  as  first.  They  run  through  and 
connect  together,  like  a  string  of  pearls,  all  his 
poetic  phases,  even  his  bronze  and  iron  periods. 
They  give  unity  to  The  Princess ;  they  relieve 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  169 

the  heaviness  of  the  dramas.  Dainty  and  ex- 
quisite in  form,  they  have,  besides  that  haunt- 
ing charm,  that  imaginative  atmosphere  which 
is  too  often  wanting  in  Tennyson's  other  work. 
Their  melody  is  almost  unsurpassed  in  our 
language,  and  they  have  received  the  homage 
of  musicians  in  frequent  settings.  Yet  I  re- 
member George  Eliot  saying  to  me,  that,  ex- 
quisite as  they  are,  they  are  seldom  suitable 
for  singing,  especially  when  compared  with 
the  Elizabethan  lyrics  which  trill  forth  as 
naturally  as  from  a  bird.  The  collocations  of 
consonants  in  Tennyson's  lyrics  often  impede 
voice  production.  It  is  easy  to  explain  the 
difference.  The  Elizabethans  were  writing  for 
a  nation  of  singers ;  Tennyson  was  writing  for 
a  people  with  whom  singing  is  a  lost  art. 

It  was  his  lyrics  that  made  him  the  popular 
poet  he  undoubtedly  was.  He  was  emphatic- 
ally, for  the  Victorian  era,  the  man  that  sang 
the  nation's  songs.  If  these  were  at  times 
wanting  in  the  finer  harmonies  and  the  more 
complex  rhythms,  that  was  no  bar  to  their 
popularity — it  was  rather  a  condition  of  it. 
The  critical  problem  of  Tennyson's  art,  we 
have  been  told,  is  his  simultaneous  acceptance 
by  mob  and  by  dilettanti.  The  solution  of 
the  problem  is  a  tolerably  obvious  one  :  he  ap- 
pealed to  these  different  classes  with  different 
phases  of  his  art.  He  could  use  the  simplicity, 


170  ALFRED  TENNYSON 

even  the  banality,  of  Longfellow,,  and  he  could 
also  wield  the  wand  of  Coleridge,  or  of 
Rossetti.  There  were  so  many  Tennysons. 

Of  Tennyson  the  man  the  public  know 
nothing ;  it  was  his  dignified  wish  to  live  his 
life  apart.  The  glimpses  we  catch  of  him  re- 
veal something  akin  to  his  own  bluff  English 
squires,  tempered  by  even  more  than  the  usual 
share  of  poetic  sensitiveness.  This  aloofness 
need  only  be  here  considered  in  reference  to 
its  consequences  on  his  art.  This  cannot  but 
have  suffered  from  want  of  contact  with  the 
larger  life,  which  made  him  impossible  as  a 
dramatist.  But  it  prepared  the  way  for  the 
Seerhood  of  the  closing  period,  and,  above 
all,  enabled  him  to  live  his  life  solely  devoted 
to  his  glorious  art. 

No  English  poet  impresses  one  with  such  a 
sense  of  continuous  improvement  in  the  tech- 
nique of  his  vocation.  At  first  the  echoes 
resound :  a  phrase  of  Keats,  a  sentiment  of 
Wordsworth,  a  rhythm  of  Byron,  a  lilt  of 
Shelley  or  of  Coleridge,  experiments  in 
metrical  quantity — everywhere  we  find  the 
poet  testing  all  things  poetical,  and  holding 
fast  that  which  was  good.  Soon  the  individual 
accent  comes,  in  the  Palace  of  Art,  in  the 
Lotus  Eaters,  in  The  Epic,  and  the  music 
strengthens  and  deepens  till  the  last.  No 
English  poet  but  Milton  shows  so  steady  an 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  171 

advance  in  his  art  from  the  beginning  of  his 
career  till  its  close.  Nor  has  Milton  the  same 
wide  command  of  all  the  keys.  Tennyson  is 
undoubtedly  the  greatest  poetic  artist  of 
England,  and  he  will  thus  remain  at  once  the 
people's  poet  and  the  poets'  poet  of  these 
isles. 

It  is  no  world-poet  that  England  now  is 
mourning  with  commingled  pride  and  grief. 
No  world-pain  throbs  through  his  lines.  No 
world-problem  finds  in  him  expression  or 
solution.  The  sweet  domesticities,  the  manly 
and  refined  ideals  of  English  life  in  the  middle 
period  of  the  nineteenth  century — Tennyson 
was  the  fluted  voice  of  these.  To  these  he  has 
given  immortality  while  he  has  gained  immor- 
tality from  them.  For  us  he  has  helped  to 
express  the  English  ideals  which  are  destined 
to  be  an  abiding  influence  in  the  national  life. 
He  spoke  not  to  the  world  at  large :  he  spoke 
only  to  his  beloved  England.  He  was,  and  is, 
our  own  Tennyson. 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

December  3,  1894 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

-  f 
|HE   most   striking    individuality 

in  English  letters  of  to-day  has 
gone  from  us.  The  loss  is  the 
greater  since  one  of  the  peculiar 
notes  of  his  genius  was  its  ver- 
satility and  unexpectedness.  You  could  never 
guess  what  Stevenson's  next  book  was  going 
to  be  about.  It  might  be  a  footnote  to 
history,  a  familiar  study  of  men  or  of  books, 
a  mediaeval  romance,  a  new  Arabian  night,  a 
talk  about  talking,  a  tale  of  Thule  or  a  ballad 
of  the  South  Seas,  a  nursery  rhyme  or  a 
sympathetic  study  of  old  men.  What  might 
he  not  have  given  us  if  his  years  had  stretched 
to  the  Psalmist's  span  ? 

But  amid  all  the  diversity  of  his  work  there 
was  one  common  strain  which  made  it  all 
his  and  gave  the  individual  note.  Jeffrey 
wondered  where  Macaulay  got  that  style  of 
his;  Stevenson  has  told  us  how  he  created 
the  prose  instrument  which  has  done  more 
than  anything  to  break  up  the  Macaulayesque 

175 


176         ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

influence.  He  played  the  'sedulous  ape/  as 
he  himself  phrased  it,  to  Mr.  Ruskin,  to 
Hazlitt,  to  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  to  all  the 
great  ones  of  the  past.  It  has  been  suggested 
that  in  his  style  he  owed  more  to  a  master  of 
the  present  than  to  any  of  the  past  grand 
masters.  There  are  who  give  to  Mr.  George 
Meredith  the  rights  of  paternity  to  Stevenson's 
style.  And,  indeed,  in  their  search  for  the 
unexpected  adjective,  in  their  use  of  the 
metaphoric  verb,  in  their  appeal  to  the  sous- 
entendu,  both  masters  have  a  common  method. 
Yet  the  younger  man  has  surpassed  his  model 
in  lucidity,  in  grace,  in  restraint  of  his  eccen- 
tricities, with  the  result  that  for  ease  there 
has  been  nothing  like  Stevenson's  style  since 
Lamb,  while  for  vivacity  and  vividness  there 
is  nothing  like  it  elsewhere  in  English  prose. 
The  richer  rhythms  he  perhaps  lacks,  and  his 
tone  has  possibly  at  times  a  touch  of  affecta- 
tion. But  no  more  subtle  instrument  of 
human  thought  has  ever  been  wielded  more 
gracefully  outside  the  shores  of  France.  No 
wonder  that  its  influence  has  spread  far  and 
wide,  till  even  the  suburban  journalist  writes 
with  something  like  ease. 

But  it  was  something  more  than  that 
edulous  imitation  that  gave  Stevenson's  style 
its  cachet.  The  style  is  the  habiliment  of  the 
spirit.  At  first  sight  it  might  seem  that 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON         177 

Stevenson  was  as  much  the  sedulous  ape  in 
the  spirit  of  his  work  as  he  had  been  in  the 
style  of  it.  Here  we  see  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
there  Alexandre  Dumas ;  here  Walt  Whitman, 
and  there  Walter  Scott;  Hazlitt  here,  and 
there  Laurence  Sterne.  Yet  what  is  this  but 
to  say  that  he  was  of  the  classic  tradition  and 
carried  it  on  in  all  branches  of  his  work  ? 
And  in  all  his  superiority  of  style  put  him  on 
the  level  even  of  the  great  masters  he  was 
copying.  If  he  could  not  equal  Poe's  com- 
mand of  the  eerie  and  fantastic,  Dumas's 
grouping  and  broad  canvas,  Scott's  humour 
and  geniality  and  multifarious  life,  he  could 
clothe  what  he  took  from  each  in  drapery 
more  closely  fitting  than  any  they  had  in  their 
wardrobe.  His  very  choice  of  models  was 
significant,  and  the  Romantic  Revival  in  the 
English  novel  of  to-day  had  in  him  its  leader. 
But  for  one  side  of  his  activity  he  had  to  go 
back  to  no  other  original  than  himself.  He 
first  found  himself  in  his  characteristic  studies 
of  men  young  and  old,  and  revealed  in  his 
treatment  of  them  a  philosophy  of  life  that 
was  all  his  own.  Stevenson  was  the  first  of 
the  younger  voices  who  spoke  out  the  thoughts 
of  men  who  faced  life  without  the  support  of 
the  older  traditions.  He  was  the  laureate  of 
the  joy  of  life,  of  the  life  here  and  now.  He 
courted  Life  like  the  gallant  that  he  was  what 
M 


178         ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

time  he  himself  was  walking  hand  in  hand 
with  Death.  That  joyous  acceptance  of  life 
as  it  is  was  the  predominant  note  of  Stevenson, 
and  was  the  chief  artistic  lesson  he  has  left  to 
his  age. 

Herein  Stevenson  came  in  line  with  the 
French  school  of  literary  critics  of  life.  They 
have  been  untrammelled  by  the  older  tradi- 
tions, they  have  faced  life  in  all  its  aspects 
bravely  and  gallantly,  they  have  been  curious 
in  their  wordcraft,  yet  in  this  last,  if  in  nought 
else,  they  carried  on  the  older  traditions.  Only 
in  one  thing  did  Stevenson  part  company  with 
them.  One  of  the  aspects  of  life  which  the 
French  faced  most  boldly  and  unflinchingly  is 
the  fact  of  sex.  Stevenson  shrank  from  this 
consciously  and  avowedly.  He  clung  to  the 
cleanly  tradition  of  restraint  and  self-respect 
in  this  regard,  and  except  for  some  slight 
sketches  in  Prince  Otto,  woman  is  absent  from 
his  pages.  The  fact  is  characteristic  of  the 
two  civilisations. 

It  was  this  gay,  gallant,  fresh  philosophy  of 
life  that  lent  their  chief  charm  to  his  first 
efforts,  An  Inland  Voyage  and  Travels  with  a 
Donkey.  He  moralised  every  step  of  the  way. 
Not  a  character  appears  that  is  not  ethically 
valued  in  the  scheme  of  life — this  one  for  his 
courtesy,  that  for  his  silence,  another  for  his 
courage,  she  for  gaiety,  he  for  his  grumpiness 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON          179 

— all  are  judged  ethically  as  well  as  artistically. 
Yet  Stevenson  was  singularly  deficient  in 
capacity  for  catching  characteristic  traits  of 
physiognomy.  He  rarely,  if  ever,  pictures 
men  by  his  pen.  He  cannot  give  a  character 
by  a  trick  of  gesture  as  Dickens  could,  and 
did. 

Still  more  was  this  philosophy  of  his  pre- 
dominant and  pervading  in  his  critical  studies. 
Whether  he  was  judging  Burns  or  Villon,  old 
admirals  or  young  men,  a  lover,  a  soldier,  or  a 
poet,  the  appeal  was  to  an  ideal  of  character 
which  Stevenson  had  formed  for  himself 
straight  from  the  facts  of  life,  or  perhaps  one 
should  say  straight  from  the  facts  of  Scottish 
life.  Although  he  may  have  thrown  over  the 
older  creeds,  they  formed  at  least  the  frame 
to  his  picture  of  life.  He  was  Scot  of  the 
Scots  in  his  judgment  of  things,  and  we  might 
almost  forgive  Calvinism  for  the  misery  it  has 
caused  in  the  world  if  only  because  it  formed, 
as  it  were,  the  sash  to  the  window  from  which 
Stevenson  looked  out  into  the  world. 

It  is  this  Calvinistic  framework,  hard  but 
clear,  which  imparted  such  effectiveness  to 
the  booklet  by  which  he  most  impressed  the 
world.  Dr.  Jekyll  became  a  classic  from  the 
day  it  was  published.  It  stands  beside  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress  and  Gulliver  s  Travels  as  one 
of  the  three  great  allegories  in  English.  The 


180          ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

idea  had  occupied  Stevenson  for  long :  it  had 
been  utilised  in  the  drama  of  Deacon  Brodie,  and 
is  referred  to  at  the  end  of  An  Inland  Voyage. 
Its  artistic  economy  is  almost  perfect;  every 
word  tells.  In  the  background  looms  one 
aspect  of  the  great  problem  of  sex  which 
Stevenson  elsewhere  evaded  or  avoided.  But 
the  facing  of  the  facts  of  life  is  straight- 
forward and  sincere.  Mr.  Hyde  is  as  much 
part  of  the  composite  nature  as  is  Dr.  Jekyll. 

It  is  curious  that  his  other  great  popular 
success  should  have  been  made  with  a  book  of 
an  entirely  opposite  character,  as  objective 
as  the  other  was  psychopathic,  as  open  and 
straightforward  as  the  other  was  weird  and 
mystic.  Treasure  Island  struck,  if  not  a  new 
note,  a  disused  one  in  English  fiction.  He 
founded,  or  at  least  refounded,  the  plein  air 
school.  The  moment  was  ripe  and  the  man 
had  come.  The  world  was  getting  tired  of 
analysis  and  introspection.  It  had  had  enough 
of  looking  on  at  painful  paturitions  of  society 
nothings.  Yet  our  gratitude  to  Stevenson 
need  not  be  the  less  because  he  appeared 
when  he  was  wanted.  In  literature,  above  all 
things,  the  master  is  paramount.  There  are 
always  a  number  of  facile  pens  that  can  write 
ditto  to  Mr.  Burke.  If  Stevenson  had  chosen 
to  develop  the  more  morbid  side  of  his  genius, 
the  world  might  have  been  flooded  with 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON         181 

morbidity.  He  took  us  out  into  the  open  air 
and  made  us  care  for  the  common  life  and 
adventures  of  men.  If  young  gentlemen 
nowadays  find  it  more  profitable  to  write 
second-rate  imitations  of  Dumas  than  to 
become  Cabinet  ministers,  they  owe  it  to 
Stevenson ;  but  for  him  they  might  have  been 
Howells  and  James  young  men. 

Of  Treasure  Island  itself  one  finds  it  difficult 
to  speak  the  unexaggerated  word.  That  the 
subject  itself  and  many  of  its  details  were 
reminiscential  with  Stevenson  matters  not.  It 
is  the  unique  fusion  of  incident  and  character 
interest  that  makes  the  book  so  remarkable. 
It  is  action,  action,  action,  from  the  first 
sentence  to  the  last.  Yet  every  one  who 
plays  his  part  in  the  action  is  as  deeply 
characterised  as  if  he  were  the  centre  of  an 
introspective  novel.  It  is  not  alone  the  sea 
cook  himself;  there  is  not  a  single  person 
whose  name  is  given  in  the  book  whose 
character  we  do  not  know  almost  as  well, 
if  not  as  thoroughly,  as  that  versatile  villain. 
From  Billy  Jones  to  George  Merry  they  are 
characterised  with  a  firmness  of  touch  and 
certainty  of  vision  equal  to  Phil  May's. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  Kidnapped. 
But  though  the  plot  lacks  the  epic  unity  of 
the  other,  yet  the  characterisation  here 
touches  profounder  depths.  Stevenson  was 


182         ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

breathing  his  native  air — he  could  create,  and 
not  merely  construct  character.  After  all, 
your  buccaneer  does  not  pay  for  mining  deep 
into  his  character.  Stevenson  had  struck  it 
rich  when  he  had  to  deal  with  Alan  Breck, 
poet  and  spy,  deserter  and  rebel,  brave  and  a 
braggart.  Those  who  know  the  printed  report 
of  the  trial  of  James  Stuart  will  recognise 
what  scanty  material  Stevenson  had  for  his 
creation  both  in  Kidnapped  and  its  sequel 
Catriona.  This  latter  failed  just  because  he 
gave  us  too  much  of  the  trial.  It  is,  indeed, 
curious  that  in  both  books  fascination  only 
begins  when  we  cross  the  Highland  line, 
either  locally  or  spiritually.  The  Lowlarider, 
with  his  canny  caution,  cannot  stir  our  blood. 
It  is  one  of  Stevenson's  triumphs  to  have  kept 
consistently  cool  the  tone  of  the  narrator,  the 
Lowland  David  Balfour,  amidst  all  the  feuds 
of  the  Gael. 

A  similar  triumph  was  achieved  when 
Stevenson  put  in  the  mouth  of  a  dominie 
the  strange  tale  of  a  fraternal  feud  told  in 
The  Master  of  Ballantrae.  The  Master  him- 
self is  over-elaborated,  and  the  whole  book  is 
too  episodical  and  not  closely  enough  knit 
together.  Yet  there  are  touches  that  cut  us 
deep,  and  there  are  scenes  that  stand  out  as 
clear  as  anything  in  Stevenson.  The  duel  by 
candlelight,  the  Master's  farewell  to  his  home, 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON          183 

the  two  brothers  at  the  tailor's  shop,  are  as 
vivid  as  anything  he  did,  but  the  connection 
of  the  book  is  not  organic. 

I  have  now  commented  upon  all  of  Steven- 
son's work  in  fiction  that  is  of  really  first-class 
rank.  The  Suicide  Club  in  the  New  Arabian 
Nights  may  go  to  join  the  others.  But  the 
rest  is  only  fantastic  trifling  which  leaves  but 
slight  impress  on  the  memory.  Almost  the 
same  might  be  said  of  the  Merry  Men  volume, 
but  the  tales  there  touch  deeper  notes.  In 
Markheim  a  higher  level  is  reached — it  wanted 
little  more  to  have  been  a  second  Jekyll. 
Thrifty  as  Stevenson  was  as  a  creative  artist, 
wasting  never  a  word  or  an  incident,  he  yet 
required  a  largish  canvas  before  he  could  pro- 
duce his  full  effect.  It  must  ever  be  so  with 
the  masters  of  characterisation;  the  conte  is 
not  for  them. 

In  thinking  over  Stevenson's  work  one  is 
apt  to  overlook  Prince  Otto.  It  is  of  so  differ- 
ent a  genre,  it  has  almost  a  note  of  insincerity. 
Yet  that  very  note  is  cognate  with  its  subject, 
and  in  its  rococo  manner  it  is  a  perfect  bit  of 
novelistic  bric-d-brac,  a  sort  of  romance  in 
Dresden  china.  There  is  one  chapter,  how- 
ever, that  redeems  it.  The  flight  of  the 
princess  through  the  woods  in  the  night  is 
one  of  the  most  perfect  things  Stevenson  ever 
wrote.  It  is  characteristic  that  it  should  come 


184         ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

with  the  plunge  from  courtly  artificialities  into 
the  open  air  and  Nature  unadorned.  The 
character  drawing  is  as  firm  as  elsewhere. 
The  Miller,  the  Scotch  Colonel,  the  English 
Traveller,  the  demirep  Countess,  the  sensualist 
Conspirator,  all  these  bite  the  steel  with  clean- 
cut  lines.  Yes,  Prince  Otto  is  the  Stevensonian 
crux;  like  not  that  and  you  are  no  true 
Stevensonian. 

Of  his  more  recent  excursions  in  company 
with  Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne  there  is  little  need 
to  speak — he  could  not  ride  tandem.  Touches 
there  are  in  The  Wrecker  and  the  rest  which 
recall  the  unadulterate  Stevenson,  but  they 
are  few  and  far  between.  Those  books  should 
form  no  part  of  his  luggage  on  his  journey  to 
the  House  of  Fame. 

Nor  will  he  carry  with  him  up  the  hill  his 
volumes  of  verse,  attractive  though  they  be  in 
many  respects.  But  their  attraction  lies  not 
in  themselves,  but  rather  in  the  fact  that 
Stevenson  wrote  them.  That  applies  even  to 
the  Child's  Book  of  Verses,  unique  as  it  is.  If 
we  contrast  it  with  the  Songs  of  Innocence,  we 
see  how  Stevenson  has  failed  to  transmute 
verse  into  poetry.  He  was  emphatically  a 
speaker,  not  a  singer. 

All  his  qualities  coalesced  when  he  came  to 
deal  with  his  own  life  as  a  young  man  in  the 
Memories  and  Portraits,  and  with  the  life  of 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON         185 

all  young  men  in  the  Firginibus  Puerisque. 
The  light  touch,  the  full  feeling,  the  deep 
thought,  the  gay  and  gallant  aspect,  make  the 
books  as  bright  as  youth  itself.  He  could 
creep  into  a  child's  mind;  but  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  these  books  were  those  of  a 
man  who  was  ever  young  at  heart,  and  so  they 
are  fitted  to  be  for  ever  the  vade-mecum  of  the 
young  man.  Who  has  entered  into  the 
motives  for  a  young  man's  laziness  like 
Stevenson?  Who  has  expressed  so  well  the 
haunting  sense  of  inutility  which  besets  almost 
all  men  on  entering  life  ?  Yet  how  play- 
fully and  how  cheeringly  he  diagnoses  the 
nostalgia ! 

These  bright  books,  full  of  the  most  ebulli- 
ent life,  were  written  by  a  man  gazing  stead- 
fastly into  the  eyes  of  Death.  Perhaps  it  was 
the  insistent  need  for  getting  rid  of  morbid 
thoughts  that  led  Stevenson  to  dwell  on  the 
active  life  in  the  open  air.  But  what  a  daunt- 
less courage  that  could  disregard  the  perpetual 
menace  of  his  grisly  visitant  and  play  so  well 
the  part  of  the  young  man  into  whose  calcula- 
tions Death  enters  not !  His  were  indeed 
brave  words,  and  their  courage  is  an  inspira- 
tion. 


SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY 


SIR  JOHN   R.   SEELEY 

EELEY  was  essentially  a  Cam- 
bridge mind.  Lucidity,  sound 
judgment,  accurate  knowledge, 
wide  outlook,  were  his.  But 
there  was  an  absence  of  elan, 
an  avoidance  of  the  personal  note,  a  refusal 
to  appeal  to  the  emotions  or  to  be  moved  by 
them,  which  left  his  readers  cold.  He  could 
convince,  but  not  charm.  His  light,  to  use 
the  expression  of  another  great  Cambridge 
man,  was  a  dry  one.  It  has  been  said  that 
Cambridge  produces  great  men,  Oxford  great 
movements,  or,  as  another  variant  puts  it, 
'  Cambridge  breeds  men ;  Oxford,  Oxford 
men.'  In  other  words,  the  great  ones  of 
Cambridge  have  not  that  personal  charm 
which  leads  to  widespread  influence,  taking 
the  form  of  '  movements/  Seeley  strikes  one 
as  having  more  intellectual  calibre  than  either 
Jowett  or  Pater,  yet  he  has  left  nothing 
like  the  stamp  of  a  similar  influence  on 
Cambridge  to  that  wielded  at  the  other 
university  by  either  of  the  latter  names. 


190  SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY 

Seeley  as  an  historical  writer  had  no  charm ; 
as  a  Cambridge  man  might  put  it,  he  could 
not  gush.  I  should  digress  too  much  if  I  dis- 
cussed how  far  this  was  due  to  the  influence 
of  the  Cambridge  ?J#os.  Perhaps  I  may  sum- 
marise by  saying  that  we  of  Cambridge  woo 
Truth,  not  Art,  forgetful  that  the  highest 
truth  can  only  be  expressed  by  art.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  fact  remains  that  Seeley  failed 
to  reach  the  highest,  because  of  the  absence 
of  that  personal  appeal  which  charms  us  in 
many  Oxford  men  of  much  inferior  gifts. 

Yet  withal  what  an  achievement  was  his  in 
the  realm  of  pure  intellect !  Putting  aside 
for  a  moment  his  theological  *  excursions  and 
alarms,'  consider  what  he  did  for  the  modern 
history  of  the  three  greatest  European  nations. 
For  Germany  he  wrote  the  best  life  of  the 
creator  of  modern  Germany.  If  his  biography 
of  Stein  fails  to  attract,  it  is  mainly  because 
Stein  is  not  an  attractive  personality.  The  best 
parts  of  the  book  are  where  he  is  not  dealing 
with  Stein  at  all,  but  with  some  great  move- 
ment of  European  feeling,  like  the  national 
protest  of  Spain.  What  lends  the  book,  how- 
ever, an  almost  epic  note,  is  the  role  played  by 
Napoleon  as  the  Satan  of  the  action.  This  he 
also  treated  separately  in  his  monograph  on  the 
great  condottiere,  as  he  regarded  him.  This 
was  an  artful  book,  in  more  senses  than  one. 


SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY  191 

It  might  be  described  as  a  brief  for  the  Devil's 
advocate.  From  the  choice  of  a  frontispiece  to 
the  last  page,  nothing  is  left  undone  to  depre- 
ciate the  man  and  his  work.  He  declared  that 
his  plan  precluded  him  from  dealing  at  length 
with  Napoleon's  campaigns,  and  by  this  artifice 
was  enabled  to  leave  out  of  account  that  side  of 
his  activity  to  which  he  could  not  have  denied 
greatness.  One  cannot  help  thinking  that  a 
survival  of  the  old  English  feeling  against 
*  Boney '  animated  his  pen,  and  gave  the  work 
a  personal  tone  somewhat  lacking  elsewhere. 
Yet  he  gave  for  France  in  it  a  clearer  account, 
in  shorter  compass,  of  the  rise  of  her  modern 
institutions  than  is  to  be  found  elsewhere. 

Original  as  was  his  work  on  modern 
Germany  and  France,  it  was  little  less  than 
epoch-making  on  modern  England.  By  the 
earlier  historians  England  was  mainly  regarded 
as  a  majestic  mother  of  Parliaments.  Seeley 
felt  that  from  this  point  of  view  the  interest 
of  English  history  ceased  with  Macaulay's 
period,  the  English  Revolution.  He  set  him- 
self to  show  that  after  this  period  England 
had  taken  up  a  far  greater,  a  world-important 
task.  He  proved  to  conviction  that  the 
eighteenth  century  was  for  history  memor- 
able, as  containing  the  conflict  of  England 
and  France  for  world-empire.  It  was  in  vain 
that  Mr.  Morley  attempted  to  prove  that 


192  SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY 

Carlyle,  by  his  perpetual  insistence,  in  the 
Frederick,  on  Jenkins's  ears,  had  anticipated 
Seeley  in  giving  due  importance  to  the  ex- 
pansion of  England.  We  felt  that  Seeley  had 
succeeded  in  what  he  had  set  out  to  do,  in 
giving  an  epic  unity  to  the  last  two  centuries 
of  English  history.  Surely  since  Sieyes  no 
pamphlet — for  it  was  little  more  in  point  of 
size  —  ever  had  such  immediate  and  wide- 
reaching  influence.  Our  Imperialism  of  to- 
day is  the  combined  work  of  Beaconsfield  and 
of  Seeley,  a  curious  couple  of  collaborators. 
Seeley's  K.C.M.G.  was  a  fit  reward  for  services 
done  to  the  empire. 

Seeley's  work  as  historian  and  as  teacher  of 
history  at  Cambridge  was  diplomatic  in  a 
double  sense.  He  aimed  at  giving  a  more 
definite  conception  to  the  meaning  of  history 
by  confining  it  to  the  study  of  the  State  and  its 
development.  Your  development  of  literature 
and  science,  your  Cidturgeschichte,  your  social  po- 
sitionof  the  people,  were  not  for  him  as  historian. 
Unless  they  got  into  State  documents  they  had 
nothing  to  do  with  history  as  he  conceived  it, 
following  in  this  the  school  of  Ranke.  For 
his  period,  and  for  his  purposes,  the  documents 
that  were  of  chief  interest  and  importance 
were  those  of  the  diplomatists.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  sufficient  remains  of  the  work  on 
which  he  was  engaged  during  the  past  few 


SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY  193 

years  to  give  him  his  due  rank  as  the  historian 
of  England's  foreign  policy. 

Of  Seeley's  work  at  his  post  in  Cambridge  I 
know  but  little.  The  Historical  Tripos  was 
his  creation,  but  it  has  yet  to  win  its  spurs. 
I  attended  one  of  his  professorial  courses,  and 
went  to  one  or  two  of  his  '  Friday  evenings/ 
at  which  Seeley  played  the  role  of  Socrates. 
His  lectures  were  clear,  but  cold ;  there  was 
an  air  of  the  higher  mathematics  about  them, 
congenial  to  the  spot,  perhaps,  but  hardly 
fascinating.  There  was  a  curious  resemblance 
to  Renan  in  his  appearance,  but  Seeley  had 
none  of  Renan' s  wit,  still  less  had  he  any  of 
Renan' s  diablerie.  Yet  both  men,  as  is  well 
known,  gained  their  greatest  success  by  their 
treatment  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 

Ecce  Homo  was,  above  all,  an  historian's 
conception  of  Jesus.  In  fact,  it  was  Seeley's 
answer  to  Gibbon's  problem  in  the  celebrated 
fifteenth  chapter.  Gibbon  wished  to  explain 
the  remarkable  spread  and  success  of  the  early 
Church ;  Seeley  tried  to  trace  it  back  to  the 
personal  influence  of  the  Founder.  In  doing 
this  he  had  naturally  to  lay  stress  on  Jesus' s 
personal  influence  as  man  upon  men,  and 
thereby  raised  the  ire  of  the  Evangelicals. 
Curiously  enough,  it  was  on  the  historical  side 
of  his  work  that  Seeley  was  most  wanting. 
He  failed  to  show  from  the  Gospel  records 

N 


194  SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY 

that  the  conscious  aim  of  Jesus' s  life  was  the 
formation  of  a  Society  of  Humanity.  He 
could  find  no  text  for  his  refrain  'L'Eglise, 
c'est  moi.'  Yet  his  insistence  on  the  social  side 
of  Jesus's  work  has  done  more  for  Christian 
union  than  any  theological  utterance  of  the 
past  third  of  a  century.  Here,  at  any  rate, 
is  common  ground. 

He  attempted  a  similar  eirenicon  in  his 
Natural  Religion,  with  reference  to  the  con- 
flict between  religion  and  science.  Religion 
is  the  pursuit  of  the  ideal  in  any  sphere,  was 
his  teaching.  Thus  science  and  art  are  both 
religious  in  tendency,  if  not  in  aim.  How  far 
the  book  served  its  purpose  it  is  difficult  to 
say.  Science  and  religion  are  no  longer  at 
loggerheads,  but  that  result,  I  fancy,  has  been 
produced  rather  by  a  process  of  exhaustion 
than  by  any  direct  influence  of  Seeley's. 
Yet  Natural  Religion  was  fully  as  original  as 
Ecce  Homo,  and  was  much  more  attractive  in 
style. 

Not  much  need  be  said  about  Seeley's  in- 
cursions into  literary  criticism.  His  contribu- 
tions to  English  Lessons,  so  far  as  we  can 
trace  them,  are  lucid,  but  wanting  in  imagina- 
tive insight.  Milton  he  treated  rather  as  an 
historian  than  a  critic.  His  little  book  on 
Goethe  is  somewhat  commonplace,  and  fails 
to  do  justice  to  the  Titanic  side  of  the  poet. 


SIR  JOHN  R.  SEELEY  195 

Seeley's  light  was  a  dry  one,  I  have  said, 
but  it  was  pure  and  steady,  and  illumined 
every  branch  of  thought  on  which  he  turned 
it.  There  are  those  who  prefer  this  species 
of  illumination  to  the  more  iridescent  glare 
and  more  fantastic  shadows  cast  by  the  feu 
follet  of  imagination.  Truth  has  its  triumphs 
no  less  than  Fancy,  and  of  these  were  Seeley's. 
The  votaries  of  Veracity  need,  above  all  things, 
restraint  and  repression ;  Imagination  must  be 
their  servant,  not  their  master.  Throughout 
Seeley's  work,  so  original  in  so  many  directions, 
one  feels  that  he  never  brought  out  all  that 
was  in  him.  Of  Gray — another  Cambridge 
man,  and  Seeley's  predecessor  in  his  chair — 
it  was  said  that  he  never  spoke  out.  May  we 
not  say  of  Seeley  that  he  never  let  himself  go  ? 
Yet  in  this  restraint  and  repression  Seeley  was 
English  of  the  English.  I  have  called  his  a 
Cambridge  mind.  Should  I  not  supplement 
this  by  saying  that  the  Cambridge  mind,  in 
all  its  strength,  with  all  its  limitations,  is  the 
characteristic  English  mind  ? 


' 

(u  i 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE,  Printers  to  Her  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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